Woman killed in Las Vegas murder-suicide was 'accidentally' cremated, lawsuit claims
A Las Vegas funeral home “accidentally” cremated the remains of a woman meant to be prepared for a funeral and burial, her family alleged in a lawsuit filed this week.
The family of Loren Chavez, 41, is suing Davis Funeral Home and Memorial Park and its associated companies for negligence, according to the lawsuit filed in Nevada's 8th Judicial District Court in Clark County on Monday.
Chavez’s husband fatally shot her before killing himself in the bedroom of their North Las Vegas home last year, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The country coroner ruled that Chavez’s cause of death was homicide and her husband, Raymundo Chavez, 43, died by suicide.
Her family arranged with the funeral home to prepare an open casket and burial for Chavez so they could say their final goodbyes, according to the lawsuit. The family had picked out a red coffin.
On Oct. 4, 2022, Chavez’s parents dropped off clothing for the funeral, which was scheduled for Oct. 7, the lawsuit said. At first, the funeral home told Chavez's parents they could not find Chavez in their system, then said it had found her remains, according to the family's lawyer, Christian Morris. A few hours after leaving the funeral home, Chavez's parents were called back.
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When the parents arrived, staffers led them to a private room.
“[Chavez’s parents] were told that Loren was ‘accidentally’ cremated by an employee instead of prepared for funeral and burial,” according to the lawsuit.
The family is devoutly Catholic and said cremation is against their beliefs that family members will be reunited in the afterlife. "That was taken from them," Morris said.
And because of the original confusion over whether Chavez was in the mortuary's system, the family has difficulty trusting that the ashes it received are even hers, Morris said.
The family alleges in part that funeral home staffers “failed in their duties” to properly identify and keep track of Chavez’s remains and said the business' policies and procedures “were insufficient to prevent issues of misidentification, misplacing, and/or mishandling” of those in its care.
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Mike Wilfong, the general manager of Davis Funeral Homes, confirmed that an “unfortunate event occurred" involving the cremation of an individual.
“We have spoken to the family involved and are working diligently to try to resolve the issue,” Wilfong said.
Davis has never had a wrongful cremation before in its nearly 50 year history, Wilfong said, adding that safeguards are in place to prevent such occurrences. He declined to elaborate.
The family is seeking damages in excess of $15,000 and relevant legal costs.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
