Grandmother’s lucky escape

It was ‘‘purely luck’’ that saved an elderly Hutt Valley woman from becoming one of the victims of a failed funeral director business, her grandson says.

A dozen people’s money went to waste when Omega Funeral Services and Memorials in Hutt Valley, run by Darryl and Melissa Angus, went into liquidation in 2005.

Those people had pre-paid for the send-off they wanted, but when the business went under, the money had all disappeared.

Hutt City councillor Campbell Barry said his grandmother, Teresa Barry, was almost one of those people, but luck saved them.

The Anguses had run the funeral service for Barry’s grandfather, Desmond Barry, about seven years earlier, and everything had gone smoothly.

That’s when Darryl Angus tried to secure pre-paid cash for Teresa Barry’s funeral. She died in 2009, but had luckily been talked out of giving money to the funeral director and ended up choosing a different company.

‘‘My grandmother was the sort of person who would trust anybody. But as far as we know, she didn’t give him [Darryl] any money.’’

Barry said even though he was young at the time, he still remembers the feeling of betrayal from someone who was a trusted community figure.

‘‘We were quite fortunate that my grandmother, who didn’t have a lot of money, wasn’t caught up in the whole thing.’’