‘This is not my mama’: Detroit family was preparing for their mother’s funeral. Then they open her casket and see a stranger inside

Saying a final goodbye to someone dear to you is a somber experience and is never easy. But for one Detroit family in mourning, they were robbed of a chance to see their mother one last time when they opened her casket and found a stranger in it instead.

WXYZ reported that the children of Kimberlly Kaye Moore, Byron Moore and Bianca Robinson, visited the funeral home ahead of their mother’s viewing and funeral on Sept. 18. Robinson said she had planned to prepare her mother by putting her “nails and lashes on.” However, Robinson soon noticed that something was amiss when funeral home staff unzipped her mother’s body bag.

“When [staff] unzipped the bag, I looked at the toe, and I was like, it’s not a mole on her toe,” Robinson told the outlet. “I turned around, and I looked at him. I said, ‘This is not my mama, sir.’”

Detroit funeral home makes a cremation mistake

Moore recalled that inside the body bag was a different woman wearing their mother’s dress. “It’s a lady in there with our mother’s dress on. Her hair on, and her makeup. It’s not our mother,” he said.

When they turned to the funeral home’s staff seeking answers, however, they were allegedly told that they “must’ve cremated her” during a mix-up. “I’m so sorry. Your mom must have been cremated when she first got here because it was two ladies that was here that came in when your mom came,” the staff said, according to the siblings.

The Detroit funeral home, identified by ClickOnDetroit as Hutchison Funeral Home, claimed that their mother’s toe tag must have accidentally fallen off, causing an identification error. This supposedly resulted in confusion about who the body belonged to. Police officers were reportedly dispatched to the funeral home when Moore and Robinson allegedly made protests following the discovery.

With their mother’s body gone, they were unable to hold her scheduled viewing and funeral on Saturday, which would have been followed by a cremation. “We don’t have a viewing. What do we have? We don’t even have her ashes,” Robinson said.

Hutchison Funeral Home’s vice president of operations, Joseph Hutchison Jr., said the company is looking into the situation. “We are heartbroken and deeply sorry for what Ms. Moore’s family has experienced,” Hutchison Jr. told ClickOnDetroit. “We are aware of the family’s concerns and we will continue to communicate with them honestly and respectfully. We have launched our own internal review to determine exactly what happened and we will deal with it accordingly.” Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time a funeral home seemingly made a mistake, like when a woman claimed her father’s wedding ring wasn’t removed before cremation.

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