DENVER (AP) — The Colorado funeral home owners who allegedly stored 190 decaying bodies and sent grieving families fake ashes were ordered by a judge to pay $950 million to the victims' relatives in a civil case, the attorney announced Monday.
The judgement is unlikely to be paid out since the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, have been in financial trouble for years. They also face hundreds of criminal charges in separate state and federal cases, including abuse of a corpse, and allegations they took $130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never provided.
That leaves the nearly $1 billion sum largely symbolic of the emotional devastation wreaked on family members who learned the remains of their mothers, fathers or children weren't in the ashes they ceremonially spread or clutched tight but were instead decaying in a bug-infested building.
“I’m never going to get a dime from them, so, I don't know, it’s a little frustrating,” said Crystina Page, who had hired the funeral home, Return to Nature, to cremate her son’s remains in 2019.
She carried the urn she thought held his ashes across the country until the news arrived in 2023 that his body had been identified in the Return to Nature facility, four years after his death.
Dozens of family members have received similar news as the 190 bodies have been identified, shattering their grieving processes. Many are still picking up the pieces, haunted by nightmares of what their decomposing family member may have looked like, or burdened by guilt that they had let a loved one down.
“If nothing else,” Page said, this judgement “will bring more understanding to the case.”
"I’m hoping it’ll make people go, ‘Oh, wow, this isn’t just about ashes,’” she said, adding that far more people are impacted than just those listed in the lawsuit.
While the victims and the class action's attorney, Andrew Swan, understood from the outset that it was unlikely families would receive any financial compensation, part of the hope was to haul the Hallfords into court and demand answers.
That, too, went unfulfilled.
Jon Hallford, who is in custody, and Carie Hallford, who is out on bail, did not acknowledge the civil case or show up to hearings, Swan said.
“I would have preferred that they participate, if only because I wanted to put them on the witness stand, have them put under oath and ask them how they came to do this, not once, not twice, but hundreds of times,” said Swan.
To Page, it felt like another slap in the face from the Hallfords.
The civil lawsuit lists over 100 family members but has been left open in case other victims come forward since 190 total bodies were discovered in the funeral homes facility in Penrose, southwest of the company's office in Colorado Springs.
Jon Hallford is being represented by the public defender's office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford's attorney, Michael Stuzynski, was not immediately available for comment.
The case helped spur Colorado lawmakers to pass sweeping regulations on the funeral home industry in the state, which previously had the laxest rules in the nation.
FILE - A hearse and debris sit behind the Return to Nature Funeral Home, Oct. 5, 2023, in Penrose, Colo. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File)
BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli strike on Beirut on Friday killed at least three people and wounded more than a dozen others, Lebanese health officials said, the first Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital in months that came after Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with rockets.
Israel announced the strike, but didn't immediately specify the target in Beirut's crowded southern suburbs, where Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group holds sway.
Lebanon's Health Ministry reported that at least three people were killed and 17 others wounded as local networks broadcast footage of wounded people being pulled from the ruins of a flattened building and ambulances rushing to the scene of the strike.
The strike in Dahiyeh, just kilometers from downtown Beirut, hit during rush hour, as people were leaving work and students headed home from school.
The escalation came as the region awaited the revenge promised by the militant group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for this week’s mass bombing attack on pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members.
Israel's rare strike on the Beirut suburbs came after Hezbollah pounded Israel with 140 rockets, which the Israeli military said came in three waves targeting sites along the ravaged border with Lebanon.
Following the attacks, the Israeli military said that it had struck areas across southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but didn’t provide details of damage.
Hezbollah said that its attacks had targeted several sites along the border with Katyusha rockets, including multiple air defense bases as well as the headquarters of an Israeli armored brigade they said they’d struck for the first time.
The Israeli military said that 120 missiles were launched at areas of the Golan Heights, Safed and the Upper Galilee, some of which were intercepted. Fire crews were working to extinguish blazes caused by pieces of debris that fell to the ground in several areas, the military said.
The military didn’t say whether any missiles had hit targets or caused any casualties.
Another 20 missiles were shot at the areas of Meron and Netua, and most fell in open areas, the military said, adding that no injuries were reported.
Hezbollah said that the rockets were in retaliation for Israeli strikes on villages and homes in southern Lebanon, not two days of attacks widely blamed on Israel that set off explosives in thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.
On Thursday, Israel said its military had struck “hundreds of rocket launcher barrels” in southern Lebanon, saying that they “were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory.”
The army also ordered residents in parts of the Golan Heights and northern Israel to avoid public gatherings, minimize movements and stay close to shelters in anticipation of the rocket fire that eventually came Friday.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since Oct. 8, a day after the Israel-Hamas war’s opening salvo, but Friday’s rocket barrages were heavier than normal.
Nasrallah on Thursday vowed to keep up daily strikes on Israel despite this week’s deadly sabotage of its members’ communication devices, which he described as a “severe blow.”
At least 20 were killed in the attacks and thousands were wounded when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The sophisticated attacks have heightened fears that the cross-border exchanges of fire will escalate into all-out war. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attacks.
In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.
Fighting in Gaza has slowed, but casualties continue to rise.
Overnight, Palestinian authorities said that 15 people were killed in multiple Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.
Those included six people, including an unknown number of children, in an airstrike early Friday morning in Gaza City that hit a family home, Gaza’s Civil Defense said. Another person was killed in Gaza City when a strike hit a group of people on a street.
Israel maintains that it only targets militants, and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military, which rarely comments on individual strikes, had no immediate comment.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count, but says a little over half of those killed were women and children.
Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
More than 95,000 people have also been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said.
The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
A woman checks the scene of a missile strike from her damaged house in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Ambulances arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People and rescuers gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
