A California cremation business is under investigation after dozens of complaints were made to police about the operation.
A probe discovered more than 150 cremated remains in a warehouse connected to the company — and now some families are starting to learn if the remains of their loved ones are included.
Ocean View Crematory in Hayward, the business in question, reportedly had its corporation license suspended in 2018 and its business suspended four years later, in 2022. Despite that, the owners continued to receive remains from people looking to honor their loved ones through the memorial process of cremation, NBC Bay Area reported.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said it found 154 cremated remains in a facility linked to Ocean View Crematory. Since announcing the discovery, only 15 families have been connected to their loved ones’ cremated remains, according to NBC Bay Area.
The county sheriff’s office said, “If they did business with Ocean View between 2013 and 2021, it’s likely we may have remains that belong to them.”
Identifications of five bodies have come through, with a tentative identification of a sixth.
The quest to find all of those remains started with the tragic death of Lawrence Sterling Robinson in November 2021.
A month later, the man’s son, Rahsaan Robinson, turned to Ocean View to have his father cremated.
“He was going to cremate my father and mail my father’s remains to me. He got my address information, he got my credit card information, he billed my credit card and told me everything was going to be fine,” Robinson said.
However, though the crematory took the man’s body and the family’s money, it reportedly never provided the family with the ashes. Ocean View staff and owners also went missing, with no one returning the Robinson family’s calls.
