Police find funeral home ran out of room for bodies

It started with reports of a strange stench in Brooklyn. Police who investigated found another example of how the coronavirus has overwhelmed the city: A funeral home had resorted to storing dozens of bodies on ice in rented trucks.

Now state officials say the funeral home could face fines and licence suspensions, and the owner says he simply ran out of room because the business had bodies ‘‘coming out of our ears.’’

Authorities found that the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home had rented four trucks to hold about 50 corpses, Health Commissioner Dr Howard Zucker said yesterday.

A neighbouring business owner reported that fluids were leaking from one of the trucks, police said.

Health officials issued guidance to all funeral homes that they would not tolerate ‘‘any of that kind of behaviour,’’ Zucker said at the daily coronavirus briefing by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Owner Andrew T. Cleckley told The New York Times on Thursday that he needed to use the trucks for overflow storage after he had filled his chapel with more than 100 corpses. ‘‘I ran out of space,’’ he said. ‘‘Bodies are coming out of our ears.’’

The funeral home was initially cited for failing to control the odours before it obtained a larger, refrigerated truck later in the day. Workers in protective gear could be seen yesterday transferring bodies into the refrigerated truck.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called the actions of funeral home officials ‘‘unconscionable.’’

‘‘I have no idea in the world how any funeral home could let this happen,’’ he said. He said officials at the home should have asked state regulators or city police for help if they were getting overwhelmed.

New York City funeral homes have struggled since late March as the number of virus-related fatalities has topped 18,000. The city set up temporary morgues. Hospitals used refrigerated tractor-trailers to cart away multiple bodies at a time, sometimes loading them in public view on the sidewalk. Crematoriums have been backed up. Many people working at funeral homes have expressed ‘‘concerns regarding storage,’’ but none as extreme as those reported at the Brooklyn facility, Mike Lanotte, spokesman for the New York State Funeral Directors Association, said.

Lanotte said Cleckley’s home was not a member of the group.

Worries intensified yesterday that the chaos at the Brooklyn funeral home would make it difficult for families to keep track of bodies of loved ones, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said. The pain for those families ‘‘must be unimaginable,’’ he said. – AP