A family is desperately waiting to pay their last respects to Lucienne, an old lady who died at the end of last year. She was to be buried in the family vault in the Dommartin cemetery (Rhône) alongside her husband and her mother. But minutes before the funeral began, the funeral director discovered there was no room for an additional body in the grave.
“He was tricked”
However, Lucienne's husband had ordered a three-seat vault from a marble worker about twenty years ago. “My father took care of everything before his death, precisely to save us hassle. In reality, he had been tricked,” denounced the son of the deceased at the microphone of France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The order would not have been respected and the man would have been scammed, without ever knowing it.
Due to lack of space, Lucienne still does not rest in peace. “Knowing that mom died on December 10 and that she is still waiting in a fridge is very hard,” said the son. The funeral home offered three solutions to the family: carry out a coring to save space, reduce Lucienne's body or find another vault to bury the couple together.
Who is responsible?
Everyone passes the buck. “The marble company has since been closed. We have no connection with her. […] There was a clear fault on the part of this company. At the time, the rules were not the same,” commented the director of the funeral home. “We are in no way responsible for the development that may have been made on the concession. We did not have the information that the concession had been made only to accommodate two bodies,” said Alain Thivillier, the mayor of the town.
-The family obtained another location to build a family vault in the Dommartin cemetery. She will have to pay 7,000 euros, and plans to launch legal proceedings.
France
