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Sorry Grandma! Funeral Home Cremates Wrong Body, Grieving Family Gets Casket Surprise

(AP)
PROSPECT, Conn. (CBS/AP) A Connecticut family wanted to pay their respects to their 95-year-old matriarch, Aurelie Tuccillo, this week after she died.

But when grieving friends and relatives arrived at the Buckmiller Brothers Funeral Home for calling hours Tuesday night, they found something strange - a different person lying in the casket.

Tuccillo's relatives called the police, who determined that Tuccillo had "inadvertently been cremated" and that a stranger's body was put in the Tuccillo coffin.

Funeral home owner Wayne P. Buckmiller calls the mix-up "a most unfortunate incident."

He says the home is working closely with the family "to resolve this difficult situation and extend our most sincere condolences to them at this challenging time."

State police spokesman, Lt. J. Paul Vance, said that the incident does not appear to be criminal, according to the Hartford Courant. "The complaint is they mixed up two bodies," he said. "It's a non-criminal event. We're doing an administrative investigation."

Still, the funeral home is being investigated by the state Department of Public Health, which oversees funeral home services.

Tuccillo's family did not immediately return a call for comment.

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