Added grief

A woman whose common-law spouse had died while they were living in a homeless shelter complained to us that the Chief Coroner’s Office had buried him even though she had requested to claim the body. When we spoke to the Coroner’s Office, we were told that the woman hadn’t taken the appropriate steps to claim the body – but that officials had also missed an email with information to contact her directly. When they couldn’t reach her, they contacted the man’s father instead, who gave directions for burial. Other errors were also discovered, including that the Regional Supervising Coroner did not review the entire file before signing off. As a result of our inquiries, the Regional Supervising Coroner apologized to the woman. The Chief Coroner’s Office thanked us for our intervention and agreed to make improvements to avoid similar situations in future.

Read about how we helped other people in our Selected cases.