Imagine that you are the parent of a teenager who has been brought to the emergency room after being involved in a horrific automobile accident. This is what happened to one New York Family. Unfortunately, their son’s death was only the start of more troubling things to come.
In January of 2005, Jesse Shipley, a 17-year-old student at Port Richmond High School, was killed in an automobile accident. After the autopsy, authorities released the body to the family for burial. The parents, Andre and Korisha Shipley, thought that their son’s entire body had been buried.
However, they found out two months after their son was buried that his body was not intact. This is when they learned that high school students on a field trip to the morgue, including some of their son’s friends, observed their son’s brain in a jar.
The medical examiner’s office states that they informed the parents that their son’s brain was being held for tests with other brains. But the parents said that they were not informed.
Since then, the Shipleys sought a court order to have their son’s body exhumed. The parents had their son’s brain sewn into the cranial and reburied his body.
The family is now suing the city to recover damages and make certain that this type of incident doesn’t occur again.
–torrance stephens, ph.d.
