Up to 60 dead bodies were found in four separate parked trucks in front of a funeral home on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, the New York Times reports. Following reports of a terrible smell coming from the vehicles, law enforcement officials uncovered the decomposing corpses inside of the U-Haul rental and pick-up trucks parked in front of the Andrew T. Cleckley funeral home.
According to the funeral home owner Andrew T. Cleckley, he had been overwhelmed by the countless number of bodies that were being brought to him.
“I ran out of space,” Cleckley said. “Bodies are coming out of our ears.” He went on to say that he was using the trucks as overflow storage for the excess number of bodies, but only after he had filled his chapel to capacity with more than 100 corpses. New York City has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19, an outbreak that has resulted in nearly 13,000 deaths.
The New York State Health Department issued a statement regarding the incident.
"Funeral directors are required to store decedents awaiting burial or other final disposition in appropriate conditions and to follow their routine infection prevention and control precautions," it said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also weighed in on the disturbing discovery. "They have an obligation to the people they serve to treat them with dignity,” he said. “I have no idea in the world how any funeral home could let this happen.”
In a statement to TMZ, U-Haul called it "a wrongful, egregious and inhumane use of our equipment."
"Our trucks are designed for household moves. Properly caring for the remains of people’s loved ones requires vehicles suited specifically for that purpose. Our trucks absolutely cannot be rented for this reason," the company added.
According to the state health commissioner Howard Zucker, the funeral home has never had any issues in the past.
