hoppyfrog
Retired WS Staff
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Searchers hunt for body mistakenly taken to landfill
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Ken KolkerThe Grand Rapids Press
HOLLAND -- A man's body picked up by mistake with last week's garbage from a funeral home is lost in a landfill.
Holland police said today they hope to talk to workers at Priority Arrowaste of Zeeland to narrow their search within Autumn Hills landfill in Zeeland Township. So far a two-day search has turned up nothing.
Relatives today confirmed the man's identity as Erwin Jordan, 66, of Holland. He died around Christmas of natural causes, relatives said.
"We're going through a little bit of hell right now," said a woman who identified herself as his daughter-in-law, but didn't want her name published.
She said she and her husband didn't know her father-in-law's body was being kept in a garage until they read about it in the newspaper. She said she didn't know whom to blame -- the waste hauler or the funeral home for storing the body that way.
"At this point, we don't have a crime," Holland Police Sgt. Keith Mulder said. "What we have is a mistake."
Arrowaste workers picked up the body Thursday from a garage at Notier-Ver Lee-Langeland Funeral Chapel, 315 E. 16th St. in Holland, police said. On Friday the funeral home discovered the body was missing.
"The family's been kept informed of what's been going on from the very beginning," said John G. Sterenberg, a funeral home co-owner.
Funeral home officials said they stored the body in the locked garage, which is not heated, while they waited word from the family or the county about whether it would be buried or cremated.
More at link:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-7/113690795950410.xml&coll=6
(To access the news story, you might have to enter a zip code; either real or fake works.)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Ken KolkerThe Grand Rapids Press
HOLLAND -- A man's body picked up by mistake with last week's garbage from a funeral home is lost in a landfill.
Holland police said today they hope to talk to workers at Priority Arrowaste of Zeeland to narrow their search within Autumn Hills landfill in Zeeland Township. So far a two-day search has turned up nothing.
Relatives today confirmed the man's identity as Erwin Jordan, 66, of Holland. He died around Christmas of natural causes, relatives said.
"We're going through a little bit of hell right now," said a woman who identified herself as his daughter-in-law, but didn't want her name published.
She said she and her husband didn't know her father-in-law's body was being kept in a garage until they read about it in the newspaper. She said she didn't know whom to blame -- the waste hauler or the funeral home for storing the body that way.
"At this point, we don't have a crime," Holland Police Sgt. Keith Mulder said. "What we have is a mistake."
Arrowaste workers picked up the body Thursday from a garage at Notier-Ver Lee-Langeland Funeral Chapel, 315 E. 16th St. in Holland, police said. On Friday the funeral home discovered the body was missing.
"The family's been kept informed of what's been going on from the very beginning," said John G. Sterenberg, a funeral home co-owner.
Funeral home officials said they stored the body in the locked garage, which is not heated, while they waited word from the family or the county about whether it would be buried or cremated.
More at link:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-7/113690795950410.xml&coll=6
(To access the news story, you might have to enter a zip code; either real or fake works.)
