A funeral home agreed to release Flint City Councilman Eric Mays’s body to his only son Monday, but that didn’t happen.
Mays’s son Eric HaKeem Deontaye Mays arrived at the Lawrence E. Moon Funeral Home in Flint on Monday evening with a hearse, expecting to move his father to a new funeral home in Saginaw.
But no one was at the Lawrence E. Moon Funeral Home, and its attorney refused to comply with the order, Mays’s lawyer Joseph Cannizzo tells Metro Times.
A man who answered the phone at the funeral home declined to comment Tuesday morning.
Mays’s son filed a lawsuit last week against the funeral home and his four siblings last week. The lawsuit accused the funeral home of holding Mays’s body “hostage” by refusing to turn it over to the son. The lawsuit also alleged Mays’s four siblings conspired to seize control of Mays’s body and profit from “their fraudulent scheme” by soliciting donations from the community for funeral services.
During a court hearing Monday, Mays's siblings agreed to turn over the body to the son, who then arranged for the body to be transferred to the Paradise Funeral Chapel in Saginaw.
Mays, a passionate and sometimes combative councilman and TikTok sensation, died at his home on Feb. 24 but didn’t leave behind a will, according to the suit.
The suit alleged that two of Mays’s siblings lied to the Genesee County Medical Examiner’s Office by saying the councilman had no children. A third sibling, who is an employee of the funeral home, falsely claimed that he had legal authority to authorize the release of the body, the suit claimed.
Mays’s son also filed a lawsuit against city officials on Friday, claiming they engaged in “a cruel act of retaliation” by withholding information about his father’s insurance benefits.
Flint officials countered that the city could not turn over the information because Mays did not list a beneficiary with the city’s insurance companies. When no beneficiary is designated, “the policy is payable to the Employee’s estate,” Flint Human Resources Director Eddie Smith said in a statement, citing the city’s benefit policies.
City officials said they are awaiting a probate court to designate a personal representative of Mays’s estate.
