Hearses Haul Away Decomposing Man from Funeral Home
Hearses and funeral cars are usually used to solemnly take deceased people to their final resting place peacefully and without incident. But that’s not exactly what happened in this case.
Lawrence Epps, the director of a Lake Wales funeral home near Tampa Bay, received several reprimands, sanctions and citations earlier this month for keeping a man in the corner of the facility for months. The findings occurred with a state inspector arrived and noticed an unmistakable odor throughout the facility. When she asked Epps to unzip a body bag he had lying on the floor, dozens of flies were released and she saw mold, maggots and other insects covering a decomposing corpse.
The body of the man was lying there since late December. Epps said he did not embalm him because he received no money from the family for his services. He has been disciplined before for doing underhanded things, too. In 1996, he wrote a bad check to pay for a biomedical waste permit for his facility. Two years later, he fraudulently transferred a real estate title and was fined $5,000. For this offense, formal charges will be filed in the next few days and he will undergo a hearing to determine what his punishment should be.
Filed Under: Funeral Cars
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