The state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors approved the voluntary surrender of licenses belonging to a funeral director and his Jacksonville funeral home on Friday afternoon, days after an inspection at the business found several violations regarding the storage of bodies.
Arkansas Funeral Care and its founder and funeral director, LeRoy Wood, were also fined a total of $10,000 by the board during a meeting in Little Rock and forced to surrender the funeral home's crematory license, effectively closing the facility, which opened in 2006.
The licenses of the funeral home and Wood had been temporarily suspended by the board during an emergency hearing Wednesday afternoon, after the board reviewed a report from inspector Leslie Stokes. While investigating two complaints against Wood and the funeral home, Stokes found a cooler "filled beyond capacity with bodies," including bodies "stacked on top of each other," "seven bodies outside of the cooler that had not been embalmed" and one body "in an obvious state of decomposition."
Officials with the state Crime Laboratory and the Pulaski County coroner's office removed 31 bodies from the funeral home Wednesday night after the temporary suspension.
Board Executive Secretary Amy Goode said Friday that family members for all 31 bodies had been contacted and board staff members were working on contacting family members for the 24 cremation remains at the funeral home.
Wood, represented by Jacksonville attorneys Brian Woodruff and Jason Kennedy, agreed to the consent agreement that also refunds money to people who paid for services that were not performed on the bodies that were removed from the facility Wednesday, and consented to transfer burial policies on those bodies.
The agreement states that Wood would expedite the issuance of death certificates as well.
The agreement stipulated that families with prepaid funerals could transfer them to other funeral homes, and the Prepaid Funeral Division with the Arkansas Insurance Department is acting as custodian of Arkansas Funeral Care's existing prepaid files and records.
A separate complaint against Ed Snow, a former embalmer at the funeral home, was not included under Wood's consent agreement.
The funeral home could be issued a new license through a different owner but would be subject to board approval and need an approved funeral director who possessed a license.
The surrender of the licenses and the fines does not shield Wood or Arkansas Funeral Care from future criminal or civil charges, officials said. Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said Friday afternoon that his office had advised the Jacksonville Police Department, with the assistance of the Pulaski County coroner's office, to investigate and prepare a case file on Arkansas Funeral Care and turn it in to his office.
Any future complaints received against Arkansas Funeral Care, Wood or Snow would be "considered on their own merits," Julie Chavis, assistant attorney general and attorney for the board, said during the meeting.
The $10,000 total in fines includes a $5,000 fine on Wood's license, a $2,500 fine against the funeral home's establishment license and a $2,500 fine on the facility's crematory license.
Wood and his attorneys declined comment after the board's decision.
The original consent agreement presented to the board Friday included fines totaling $5,500, but the board raised the total penalties to $10,000 after hearing from members of the public who packed the conference room at the board's downtown Little Rock office.
The standing-room-only crowd included many family members of loved ones on whom Arkansas Funeral Care performed services.
The funeral home handled the November 2014 funeral of David Dewayne Parchman. His mother, Patricia Parchman, told board members Friday during a short, public hearing that her family was "not confident that we have the right remains in his urn."
"We don't even know," she said. "I wrestled with this. I knew there was something wrong shortly after we had the service at the church. I knew something wasn't right. My son's body had deteriorated, and it was horrible. I've wrestled with this for two months now, and I just need to know. Is there some way we can find that out?"
Board member Bobby Thurman told Parchman that DNA testing couldn't be performed on cremated remains.
Parchman later talked about the condition of her son's body at his funeral, noting that his cheeks were "sunk in and his nose was black."
"I thought my son was shedding tears, and it was bodily fluids leaking out at the church," Parchman said.
John Loukota said Arkansas Funeral Care handled the May 2013 funeral of his wife, Ok Sun Loukota. After the board meeting, Loukota said he felt as though Wood got a slap on the hand.
"What's to stop anybody else from doing it?" he said. "He had no respect."
Kyle Loukota's son, John Loukota, said his mother was "real bad discolored" at her service.
"None of us knew why she looked the way she did," he said. "Then this leaked out and it all made sense. That tells me it's been going on for a while."
Other families present at the hearing were still caught in limbo, with the cremated remains of loved ones still at the funeral home.
Summer Hill's mother, Pamela Hill, died Jan. 16, and her cremated remains were still at Arkansas Funeral Care, she said.
"Because of them I don't have my mother's ashes when I'm going to have the memorial today, so she won't be there," Summer Hill said. "It's like he came here thinking he could hand over his license and that would be it, and that's all the punishment that he should get."
Her sister-in-law, Jennifer Hill, said an employee of Arkansas Funeral Care called the family Wednesday and was "very persistent" about getting paid for funeral services.
"We paid them, and hours later you shut them down," Jennifer Hill told the board. "We just paid them, and now we have to pay somebody else.
"You can't pay for all this anguish that we're feeling. To me, $10,000 isn't enough. $20,000 isn't enough. I don't think $50,000 is enough. He obviously has a lot of money because he's been bringing them in."
Officials wouldn't speculate why Arkansas Funeral Care was holding so many bodies.
An inquiry into Arkansas Funeral Care began after the board received complaints from former Arkansas Funeral Care employee Mike Jones and Darriel Ezell, owner of Clinton Funeral Service in Clinton.
Jones' Jan. 12 letter alleged that Arkansas Funeral Care demonstrated a "blatant disregard for the dead," as there were bloodstains on the walls in the prep room, 24 bodies were stacked up outside the cooler, and Snow once cremated two bodies at once.
Wood and Snow claimed Jones' allegations were "not true" in Tuesday letters to the board.
Ezell said in a Jan. 16 letter to the board that Arkansas Funeral Care's prep room resembled a "cheap horror movie" during an August 2013 visit, with "bodies lying everywhere."
Stokes' daily inspections from Jan. 12 to Jan. 16 disclosed a number of violations at the funeral home, including one body "strapped on a cot in an obvious state of decomposition, half covered in a bed sheet that was saturated in bodily fluids that had seeped from the body." On Stokes' second visit, the same "decomposing body was still on a cot, half wrapped in a soiled sheet, unrefrigerated."
Stokes also reported that the entrance door to the holding facility was not locked nor secured during two visits and that she "reasonably" believed during one visit that "she identified ashes from the crematory mixed with chunks of flooring in a barrel."
Metro on 01/24/2015