Brittany Jones called 911 to ask them to intervene so that the funeral release the body

May 2, 2014 11:19 GMT  ·  By

A grieving family from Kentucky is accusing a local funeral director, who is also an elected county coroner, of taking advantage of them after their baby passed away, claiming the man held their dead infant’s body for ransom.

Brittany Jones called 911 to report the director of the Lamb Funeral Home in Hopkinsville, Christian County, for refusing to release the remains of her dead son unless her family paid the balance of his services, Yahoo News reports.

“He said that I owe him money, but he hasn’t done any — provided any service. He hasn’t planned the funeral. He wouldn’t do anything until we come up with the money,” Jones told dispatchers when she called 911.

Jones explains that she and her husband could not afford to pay for her son's burial, but Shane Hessey, the owner of a Todd County funeral home, offered to bury the stillborn child for free. So, they went to pick the body up from Lamb Funeral Home, but Dorris Lamb, the director of the funeral, refused to hand over the remains, saying that the couple needed to first pay the balance they owed him for the transportation costs of the body.

“We went to pick the body up, and he refused to give us the body because there was a balance owed on his transportation costs. We waited until the next day before we got the remains,” Hessey says.

The family wanted to hold an open casket funeral for their baby, but Lamb Funeral Home was delaying the release of the body, so Mrs. Jones decided to call the police and ask them to intervene because time was running out to embalm their son.

However, when asked about the incident by local media, Lamb denied the couple’s claims, saying there was never any charge or demand for money and that he agreed to release the body the next day.

“When babies’ families or adults are distraught, sometimes they hear things or think things that aren’t necessarily true,” Lamb states. “This talking about monies, there was no monies involved at all on our behalf. All we did was tell them that they would need to come the next day.”

Nonetheless, Lamb’s file with the Kentucky Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors reveals that this is not the first complaint presented against his practices, as another family who lost two babies in just two months has brought similar claims against his funeral home in the past.