2: 26 pm
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The English Brothers Funeral Service House in Brooklyn.
Helayne Seidman
Next-door neighbors walking by an infamous Brooklyn funeral home today were surprised by the sight of bagged bodies stacked outside, unrefrigerated and in full view.
” At one point they had 20 bodies outside,” said a regional homeowner who lives a block from the English Brothers Funeral Service House in Sheepshead Bay.
” Kids strolling by can see them. I was so disgusted that I snuck all the way in one day and saw bodies in bags on gurneys without covers.
Frank Restivo, 63, who’s owned the mortuary for years and who was implicated however not charged in a body-harvesting scandal in 2005, didn’t flinch when The Post called him Friday.
” I know,” he said, when inquired about the corpses outside. “We’ve got say goodbye to room inside.”
Due To The Fact That of COVID-19, Restivo said that he had 40 bodies loaded inside the funeral house Friday and was required to put the other bodies in the side backyard. Prior to coronavirus, he stated, he usually runs out than 2 or 3 bodies at one time at the funeral home.
Restivo said everyone was unprepared for the variety of deaths triggered by the pandemic however blamed healthcare facilities. He stated they are interacting terribly, if at all, with funeral directors and households.
” They’re frightening families by telling them they have 2 days to choose up the bodies and if not they will be shipped off to Hart’s Island,” Restivo declared. “The households ask us to take the bodies– which we wish the healthcare facilities could keep a little longer given that they have morgues and refrigeration.
The city charges loved ones $250 to go to Hart’s Island and get the bodies back after they’ve been buried out there.
” It’s chaos,” Restivo stated. “Individuals are worrying. I got a female pertaining to see me today hysterical. Her liked one is at [a hospital] and they told her he was going to be transferred to Connecticut, that made no sense at all.”
He called a crematorium Friday to organize for the cremation of 4 bodies but the earliest date he might get was May19 In the meantime the bodies sit in the unrefrigerated funeral house.
Funeral directors are needed to store bodies in suitable conditions and to follow their regular infection prevention and control safety measures, stated city Health Department representative Jeffrey Hammond. Mike Lanotte, the executive director and CEO of the New York State Funeral Directors Association informed the Post he had actually never become aware of a funeral house leaving bodies outside. He said one Queens funeral service house has actually acquired a cooled truck to deal with the coronavirus-related overload of bodies.
” We have no choice but to put the bodies outside,” Restivo said. “It’s safe. We have an 8-foot fence and a gate and we lock it.
” I have actually never ever seen anything like this in 43 years. I never ever pictured it could happen. We are struggling and it’s awful for the households.”
Restivo was investigated as part of a 2005 probe into a multi-million dollar plan to carve up cadavers for profit by offering body parts to medical schools and the armed force without next-of-kin permission. The ghoulish, nationwide fraud included several funeral homes and was masterminded by Michael Mastromarino, a previous dental cosmetic surgeon who died in jail of liver cancer in 2013.
The secret harvesting of body parts, mainly leg bones used for transplants, netted millions in potential profits, police sources said.
” When again the English Brothers funeral house is at the center of an outrageous occurrence,” said attorney Sanford Rubenstein, who filed civil suits on behalf of relatives of people whose dead bodies were chosen apart for profit, in addition to the irritated recipients of infected tissue and organs from the corpses. Rubenstein stated the English Brothers Funeral House, one of the accuseds, settled for an unspecified amount.
