The surge in deaths caused by the virus has created many issues in New York City.
It made one Brooklyn funeral home so desperate that they resorted to unthinkable measures to store the huge number of bodies.
After police received reports of a bad smell emanating from Andrew Cleckley Funeral Services in Brooklyn, they arrived on the scene and discovered 40-60 bodies stacked inside a pair of non-refrigerated U-Hauls and on the ground inside the building.
You can see news footage here:
Bodies stored in U-Haul trucks at funeral homewww.youtube.com
Inside the trucks, bodies were stacked on top of each other.
In some cases, decomposition caused them to begin leaking putrid fluids.
John DiPietro, whose business neighbors the funeral home, had witnessed corpses being loaded into the trucks.
He commented:
"You don't respect the dead that way. That could have been my father, my brother. You don't do that to the dead."
Eric Adams, President of the Brooklyn Borough, arrived at the funeral home and called for a "bereavement committee" to help deal with the surge in bodies caused by the virus.
"We need to bring in funeral directors, morgues, [medical examiners], clergies … when you find bodies in trucks like this throughout our city, treating them in an undignified manner, that's unacceptable."
The NYPD and state Department of Health closed down the street to further investigate the incident.
According to the police, the funeral home also owns two other U-Haul trucks, these ones refrigerated, which were also storing bodies.
Representatives from the funeral home claim the bodies were supposed to be picked up by a local crematorium.
But they noted the staff never arrived to make their pick-ups.
The owner of a nearby business was disgusted by the story, saying:
"They were storing them in U-Haul trucks; we knew what was going on but not the extent...One thing to be [killed] by the [virus], another to be treated inhumanly."
Though authorities blocked view of the facility with a tarp, bodies could be occasionally seen being carried out of the building for the rest of the night.
A police officer told the New York Post:
"You don't see this all over the city — especially in a residential neighborhood. Never seen anything like this."
The funeral home has not issued any formal statement, and investigators are still looking into the incident. The global pandemic continues to cause extreme behaviors that no one could have predicted.
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