A Jan. 12 inspection of Arkansas Funeral Care in Jacksonville found the funeral home's cooler in its holding facility "filled beyond capacity with bodies," according to a state inspector's report, with two bodies "stacked on top of each other" and other bodies, not embalmed, lying outside the cooler.

The state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors suspended the licenses of the funeral home and its manager, LeRoy Wood, during an emergency hearing Wednesday afternoon. Several hours later, officials with the state Crime Laboratory and the Pulaski County coroner's office removed 31 bodies from the funeral home.

The board's staff members spent much of Thursday notifying family members to make arrangements to transfer the bodies to other funeral homes.

In her report to the funeral board, inspector Leslie Stokes noted that during her initial inspection of the funeral home, one body "was 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." The same "decomposing body was still on a cot, half wrapped in a soiled sheet, unrefrigerated" on her second visit (Jan. 13), Stokes said.

Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs said the two offices finished their work at Arkansas Funeral Care about 12:30 a.m. Thursday, with 11 bodies transported to the Crime Lab and 20 sent to the coroner's office.

The bodies were split between the two facilities so the coroner's morgue wouldn't be overburdened, Hobbs said.

Hobbs said calls Thursday morning to his office had been "nonstop" from clients of Arkansas Funeral Care, but his office directed calls to the state board.

"Once a family makes a decision on what funeral home they are going to use, then we do our normal procedure and the power of release," he said. "We have to get a release signed from the family to allow that funeral home to pick up their loved one. From that point, we do our normal procedure."

Board Executive Secretary Amy Goode said 20 family members had been contacted by 4 p.m. Thursday about the locations of their loved ones that had been at Arkansas Funeral Care, but the board was working into the evening to contact all families involved.

"We're letting them know what they need to do to get their loved ones picked up, whether they are at the coroner's office or with the state," she said. "They're having to contact funeral homes and work with them on getting their loved ones."

Goode said family members couldn't be contacted until after the temporary suspension of Arkansas Funeral Care's license and officials had documentation on the bodies at the funeral home.

The board began investigating Arkansas Funeral Care, on West Main Street in Jacksonville, after receiving a complaint from former employee Mike Jones, who said in a Jan. 12 letter to the board that Arkansas Funeral Home showed a "blatant disregard for the dead."

Jones' complaint alleged there were bloodstains on the walls in the prep room, 24 bodies were stacked up outside the cooler, and an embalmer cremated two bodies at once.

Wood and the embalmer, Ed Snow, replied to Jones' allegations in a letter to the board Tuesday, stating that all of Jones' claims were "not true."

Snow said that "never had there been two bodies cremated at the same time. No time has that ever happened." Wood's reply to the allegation of body-stacking said, "We have the utmost respect, care and reverence for everyone's loved one we are privileged to serve."

Wood also said the preparation room at the funeral home was "cleaned and disinfected after each embalming" and cremating two bodies at once "would be in total violation of state law and total disrespect to the families and our God whom we serve."

A hearing about the suspension of Wood and Arkansas Funeral Care's licenses is scheduled for 1 p.m. today at the board's downtown Little Rock office.

Stokes visited the funeral home, which was founded in 2006, daily from Jan. 12 to Jan. 16. Her first visit occurred approximately 3:30 p.m. Jan. 12, when she noticed the entrance door to the holding facility was not locked nor secured, her report states. During a Jan. 13 visit, Stokes said she walked through the funeral home unaccompanied into the holding facility and prep room, both of which were unlocked.

During her visits, Stokes saw what she "reasonably believes was blood on the prep room wall and bodily fluids on the floor."

During her Jan. 12 visit, Stokes also reported observing "at least seven bodies outside of the cooler that had not been embalmed, two of which were placed side by side on a wooden board sitting directly on top of two wooden pallets on the floor." Two more bodies were stacked on a cot on the floor of the cooler, the report states, and the decomposing body was strapped to the cot.

The report states that the floor of the crematory was in "poor condition and coming apart in chunks," and Stokes said she "reasonably believes that she identified ashes from the crematory mixed with chunks of flooring in a barrel."

The board also received a letter Jan. 16 from Darriel Ezell, owner of Clinton Funeral Service in Clinton, stating that when he visited Arkansas Funeral Care in August 2013, he saw a body lying "on a wooden table in the garage bay (in August) in view of anyone driving around their building."

Ezell said he was "appalled" by what he saw, as the conditions of the prep room were "terrible."

"I stepped two feet inside the door and stopped," he said. "I stopped because of a body lying on the floor. There were bodies lying everywhere. ... This was neglect. It looked like something from a cheap horror movie. All I could say was 'oh my.'"

Ezell said Thursday that he didn't file a complaint against Arkansas Funeral Care at the time because he didn't have any evidence of what he saw and it "would've been his word against theirs."

Jeff Smith, president of the Arkansas Funeral Directors Association, said he'd never heard of a state funeral home inspection uncovering charges such as the ones found by Stokes.

Smith said Arkansas Funeral Care was not a member of the association nor had the funeral home ever been, and an incident such as this "brings a lot of questions and doubt to people's mind at a time when what they really need is comfort and security."

Association funeral homes had spent Thursday talking to many families affected by the closure of Arkansas Funeral Care, Smith said.

"We are heartbroken," he said. "The funeral homes of Arkansas are stepping up and doing everything we can and the first thing we are saying is, first and foremost, we're going to take care of you and we're going to take care of your loved ones. We will worry about the particular details later. I've gotten numerous phone calls from members across the state -- from Fayetteville to El Dorado -- saying if there's anything they can do to help, they'll do whatever they can. That's the kind of people we are. It's a very sad affair."

Arkansas Funeral Care has been the focus of other complaints, although less serious, according to a review of board records.

In July 2013, the board imposed a civil penalty against Arkansas Funeral Care in the amount of $1,500 for the funeral home's refusal to pay Buie Funeral Home in Sheridan for services performed on a body in February 2013. Arkansas Funeral Care resolved the complaint by paying Buie $1,440 in restitution.

A complaint filed in November stated that a Grant County resident had been told by Arkansas Funeral Care that her mother had died at a nursing home, when, in fact, the funeral home had pulled the wrong file. Wood called the incident "an honest mistake" in a letter to the board, and the board concluded Jan. 8 that the allegation was "not conduct or matters that are in violation" of the board's licensing law, rules and regulations.

The board also found that complaints filed in September and December 2011 and July were not violations.

Metro on 01/23/2015