Families protest, sue after allegedly not told relatives at Cook County Medical Examiner's Office

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The I-Team is looking at reports of people's loved ones kept at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office for weeks, while their families had no idea. Some of those families were protesting Tuesday.

The I-Team has uncovered three cases in recent months and years in which grieving mothers say they were not told their sons were at the medical examiner's office.

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Now, those families are protesting, and an attorney is taking action.

The families are coming together with the same emotional cause.

"We are three different moms, three different scenarios, with the same ending," Christine Muniz said.

"They need to change the system, and notify people the correct way," Ayanna McFadden said.

"I am in so much pain from the way the medical examiner has treated me," Ruthie McKinnie said.

McKinnie's son was at the morgue for almost six weeks. Her family called with no luck.

"I asked them 'Did they had a Kelvin Davis there?' I gave description that he's very tall, 6'4," with freckles, very distinctive looking," Deborah Smith said.

But Davis was in the system as Kevin Davis, due to a wrong name on a police report, and a friend of Davis giving police the wrong information.

The family said the medical examiner's office should have said they had a "Kevin."

The office told the I-Team that Davis did not have an ID on him, and that it worked to match fingerprints, which police say were coming back to other names.

"We want transparency; we want change. And we want accountability," said Christopher Jahnke, an attorney with Frankfort Law Group.

McKinnie's attorney filed a complaint with the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

He also represents Muniz, and filed a lawsuit on her behalf.

The medical examiner's office filed a motion to dismiss that is pending in the federal court.

As the I-Team reported in 2021, the medical examiner's office told Muniz that her son David Carroll's body was not there, but he was, for nearly two months.

Because of ABC7 Chicago's story, the office took disciplinary action. The Cook County Office of Inspector General investigated, and found failures and violations.

McFadden said she waited a month to get a call about her son, Malcom.

The medical examiner's office said it left a voicemail with Malcom's brother within days because that was a tentative next of kin, but his brother got the message weeks too late.

"A voicemail is not getting in contact with somebody," McFadden said.

The medical examiner's office has given its "deepest condolences" to all the families involved.

In response to the protest, it said it handles well over 7,000 cases each year, and that there are no challenges with the vast majority of identifications, adding and that it works with investigating agencies to help find next of kin.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office also says it "takes pride in the work we do to ensure that decedents under our care are treated in a dignified and respectful manner."