Family Needs Help Moving Grandfather’s Body Out Of Home

Christoll Millard is devastated by the death of her grandfather, Frank Hammonds.

“That’s my grandpa dead in there,” she said, fighting back tears and pointing to her family’s home in Chaparral, New Mexico.

82 year old Frank Hammonds died at 5 AM on Friday but several hours later his decomposing body remained inside the family’s home. His widow Darlene said they can not afford to pay for an ambulance to take him to a morgue. She relies on social security checks and says it’s not enough to cover the fee.

“He’s been a good father and I don’t think he deserves to be treated this way,” she said.

Medical investigators from Dona Ana County went to the Hammond’s home the morning he was found dead. They determined the death was not suspicious then left.

“They poked him and they took blood from him but they can’t take him? That’s hard on us,” said Millard.

ABC-7 spoke to a county spokesperson. They said it is not the county’s responsibility to transport bodies. That financial–and emotional–burden falls on the deceased person’s family.

Now Hammond, a veteran who served in the Korean War, lies in the bedroom he once shared with Darlene. She says that now his grandchildren are scared to go inside the house. “They don’t want to go in there and see him anymore and it’s just heartbreaking to think that he has to lay in there all this time and not one hospital or ambulance wants to take him without cash,” she said.

The family would like for Hammonds to be taken to Beaumont Army Medical Center’s morgue. They said they would take the body to the morgue themselves if it came down to that, and added they’d like to scrape together enough cash to arrange a proper funeral.