NORTH MIAMI, Fla. – A grieving South Florida family is demanding answers after discovering the body they were preparing to bury was not their loved one.
Sarahdjie Monosiet told Local 10 News’ Ian Margol that her father, Edner Monosiet, was a great storyteller and an all-around good person.
“My dad just loves us all just about the same and when he got older he learned how to be more affectionate and say ‘I love you’ to us and stuff like that, so it was really cool to just have him around, he was just a great guy,” she said. “I just want my dad. I just want to find out where my dad is.”
It’s easy to imagine her shock last week when she and her family were preparing for his funeral service and looked inside his casket only to see who they believe was a completely different person.
“I said ‘Who is this, who could this possibly be? This is not my dad,’” she said.
Her father had some preexisting health conditions and caught COVID-19 which eventually led to his death at the end of August.
The 71-year-old passed away at Larkin Community Hospital South Miami on Aug. 28 and just hours later, was picked up by employees of the Emmanuel Funeral Home.
The hospital said only one person died that day and the funeral home maintains the man in the casket was, in fact, Edner Monosiet.
The family still not convinced however, saying the man in the casket was several inches shorter than Monosiet and didn’t have identifiable scars that their loved one has had for most of his life.
“We’re looking at all these little things and nobody found any of them,” Sarahdjie Monosiet said. “He deserves to have his last rights. No matter where he is, we just want the body.”
The family isn’t blaming anyone in particular, they just want to know where Monosiet’s body is.
The family ended up holding a memorial without a viewing, and the body is still at the funeral home.
Miami-Dade police told Local 10 News they are going to be working with the medical examiner’s officer to identify the body once and for all.