A family reportedly attacked a funeral home worker after seeing the body of their relative covered in maggots.
The bizarre incident took place in Pretoria, South Africa, where a family entrusted the body of Oupa Ngobeni to a funeral parlor four days prior to his burial.
While the family thought their deceased relative was in good hands, they were shocked to see his decomposing body covered in maggots.
As Solly Khoza, the operator of the funeral parlor in question, explained, the relatives of the deceased son attacked him after spotting maggots crawling over his body.
According to the reports, the undertaker initially refused to open the coffin. It wasn’t until he caved in under the pressure that he revealed the dead man’s body to the family.
“We became a huge embarrassment to the community during the funeral,” Lebogang Manamela, one of the affected family members, said in an interview with IOL as he vowed to fight to find out what happened to their relative.
While the family is demanding answers, Khoza insisted that the deceased man’s body wasn’t mistreated in any way. As the undertaker claimed, the deceased man already had maggots in his feet before his death.
Khoza also went on to defend himself by saying that Ngobeni was a diabetic whose legs should have been amputated when he was still alive.
Contradicting the undertaker’s statement, Ngobeni’s partner, Mary Phiri, insisted that the man was free of maggots when he died and when he was being transported to the mortuary.
“I fail to understand why I was accused of being responsible for decomposing the deceased’s body while his wife knew about his sickness,” Khoza said after the outraged family spoke out.
“When you are calm, please come to the mortuary and I will see how I can compensate you.”
Replaced!