Two New York families endured the same ghoulish nightmare when the bodies of their deceased loved ones were lost, according to lawsuits.
One Bronx family has accused Turkish Airlines of losing the remains of their patriarch on the way to his funeral in Kazakhstan, while a Brooklyn clan charges their dead mother’s body was 11 days late to services in Puerto Rico.
“I cannot talk about this without tears in my eye,” said Nagima Alzhan 63, whose husband Serik Berlinbayev died in a Bronx hospital in December 2019 from liver problems.
Nagima had immigrated to the United States in 2002 after winning a lottery for a green card, learning English and working her way up to become a registered nurse. Berlinbayev, who was a government official in their native Kazakhstan, joined her here in 2015, she said.
“I was working two jobs. He was taking care of us,” she said of her husband of 35 years.
When he died, Nagima paid $15,000 to a local funeral director to embalm the remains and arrange transport to their homeland, so Berlinbayev could have a funeral and be buried within seven days of his death, as per Muslim custom.
His body was put on a flight out of Kennedy Airport on Dec. 19, 2019, and expected to arrive in Kazakhstan on Dec. 21, when about 100 people were due to attend the funeral.
But the remains didn’t show up.
“No one was picking up the phone,” she recalled. “At that moment, we were just crying. It was terrible. It’s not a piece of, I don’t know, something — it’s human. It’s unbelievable what we went through.”
Berlinbayev’s body, which had been lost in Istanbul, was finally located but not until the family was forced to break the seven-day custom. Turkish Airlines didn’t apologize, she added. Nagima is seeking unspecified damages in her Bronx Supreme Court lawsuit against the airline.
The family of Ana Rivera was also traumatized, according to a Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Rivera, a married mother of two, died at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center on March 31, 2020, from complications of pneumonia. The family hired Paccione Funeral Directors on Staten Island to help transport Rivera’s body via American Airlines to Puerto Rico, where it was due to arrive on April 8, 2020, according to the legal filing. But the body didn’t show up until April 19 — and was decomposing, the family charged in the litigation filed against Paccione, American Airlines and others.
“The law puts a special value on human remains and you can’t treat deceased person like a piece of luggage or a piece of cargo,” said lawyer Mark Seitelman, who represents both families. “It has to be treated with respect, it has to be delivered on time to the mourners who are waiting to receive it.”
Turkish Airlines didn’t respond to a message seeking comment. American Airlines said it would review the allegations.
Rocco Paccione, owner of the Staten Island funeral home, noted that Rivera’s death came as deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic put incredible strain on resources throughout the health care and funeral industries in the five boroughs.
“We were given a set of instructions. We followed our instructions and Ms. Rivera got home,” he said, declining further comment on the pending litigation.
