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An investigation is underway after a couple discovered that a contractor for a funeral home in Lodi, California, threw away the remains of their stillborn baby.
The Lodi Police Department (LPD) received a report on July 16 from the Cherokee Memorial Funeral Home that the body of a stillborn baby was missing from the storage area.
After beginning the investigation, police said in a statement on their Facebook page that they discovered video footage from the funeral home that showed a contracted employee discarding an item containing the baby's remains two weeks before the report was made to police.
The employee reportedly is a contractor from a transport service used by the funeral home, and police said they were able to identify and question the employees involved.
Police said the baby's remains could not be retrieved as "all waste containers have been emptied and transported by the waste collection company."
The parents were told on Saturday that their baby's remains were gone. Everardo Alex Munoz, the baby's father, told KTXL: "You hear it and you don't believe it. So you have to hear it multiple times till it just clicks in your head that your daughter's remains were thrown in the trash."
According to the local news station, Munoz and Marijo Planas planned to lay their daughter, Amiliana Rose, to rest on Monday. The baby was born on June 9 at 21 weeks old and was collected by the funeral home on June 28.
While they learned what happened to their baby girl on July 16, the parents claimed the funeral home has been aware of the incident since July 5.
Munoz and Planas reportedly watched the surveillance footage from the funeral home, and said that they watched a person on the camera grab the baby's remains from a freezer and "dropped her on the floor."
"The guy got the bag and started shaking her, like this and swinging her. Opened, unzipped her, took her out of the black bag, opened it, got a trash bag and just threw her in there. He just threw her," Planas said.
Munoz added: "There's no way that he could shake the body violently, like pick her up and say he didn't feel anything."
"This pain is never going to go away," said Planas.
LPD gave an update on Monday that detectives searched a landfill but did not find anything.
"The investigation will be forwarded to the San Joaquin District Attorney's Office to determine if any criminal charges will be filed. Our investigation is still open at this time," the police said in a statement.
The Cherokee Memorial Funeral Home told Newsweek in a statement, "Cherokee Memorial is aware of a situation that has arisen with a grieving family we are currently serving. We are working closely with the family, law enforcement and others involved to investigate the incident and resolve the issue quickly."
Newsweek reached out to the Lodi Police Department for comment.
Update 7/19/22, 5:56 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from the Cherokee Memorial Funeral Home.
About the writer
Emma Mayer is a Newsweek Culture Writer based in Wyoming. Her focus is reporting on celebrities, books, movies, and music. ... Read more