US Funeral Home Mistakenly Gives Family Dead Son's Brain Instead Of Clothes

A funeral home in San Jose, California's Bay Area, has been dragged to court after a father was handed his late son's brain instead of his clothes.

Alexander Pinon, 27, died on May 19, 2025. His family engaged Lima Family Erickson Memorial Chapel in San Jose for a full-service memorial. They requested that Alex be dressed in nice clothes for his burial and asked for the clothing he had worn at the time of his death to be returned to them, according to an exclusive report by ABC7 News.

The family's attorney, Samer Habbas, told ABC7 News, “They wanted to do what's right for their son, and they wanted to have a dignified farewell for him.”

Habbas filed a lawsuit stating the family paid over $10,000 for a memorial package. He said that the funeral director, Anita Singh, handed Alex's father a bag, which he took home intending to place in the laundry.

“At that point, they had no idea that it was their son's brain that was in the washing machine. They didn't know if it was mixed up with somebody else's brain, whether it was their son's,” Habbas said.

Alex's father reportedly removed the brain from the washing machine, returned it to the bag, and took it back to Singh at the funeral home. Habbas added that Singh took the bag back from him but “never disclosed whose brain it was, never gave information, no apologies, and said, ‘I'll take that from here'.”

The lawsuit alleges that weeks later, a whistleblower at the funeral home confirmed the contents of the bag were Alex's brain. After the mix-up, Anita Singh allegedly placed the brain in a box and left it outside in the funeral home's courtyard for about two-and-a-half months. An employee eventually discovered the box, overwhelmed by the smell of “a rotting human brain.”

Habbas criticised the funeral home's handling, stating, “Errors can happen. But what cannot happen, and what should not happen, is that you cover up your errors.”

When ABC7 News caught up with Anita Singh at her home and asked, “How do you give a father his son's brains and not a bag of clothing?" she reportedly stepped back without responding.

The lawsuit is ongoing, and Alex Pinon's family is negotiating plans to reunite his brain with the rest of his remains.