Brooklyn Family Accuses NYPD Of Confusing Relative’s Ashes For Heroin

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Brooklyn Family Alleges NYPD Confused Ashes For Heroin

A family in Brooklyn is accusing the New York Police Department of making off with their grandfather’s ashes, which authorities believed to be heroin, according to The New York Post.

In February of 2018, Lucia Santiago woke up from a nap to see “six or seven” NYPD officers in her Bushwick apartment conducting a raid. “When I opened my eyes I saw…six or seven police [officers] in my room,” she explains. “They told me, ‘Get out of the bed.'” With Lucia, her son, and a grandson in cuffs, the authorities searched the home, and demanded to know where “the guns and drugs” were hidden.

The whole reason this raid was being conducted was in response to a tip that one of Santiago’s grandsons was involved in a gun sale. That search allegedly led the officers to the cremated ashes of Lucia’s husband Miguel, who died of natural causes at the age 72 a few years prior, inside of several vials. The authorities believed that these capsules contained heroin, and proceeded to take them in as evidence.

“I said, ‘That’s the ashes of my husband,'” Santiago claims to have told an officer. “‘No,’ he told me, ‘That’s drugs.'” She, her son, and her two grandsons were charged with possession of a controlled substance and ammunition, but the charges later ended up being dismissed.

Now, the goal is to get Miguel’s ashes back, since the family was told that evidence they don’t use is discarded.