Background: Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island (Google Maps). Inset: Emilia L. Severino (Bell Funeral Home, Inc.)
The family of a woman who passed away in a New England hospital is raising allegations against the facility for mistakenly handing over the wrong body to a funeral home. This funeral home, they claim, failed to verify the identity of the remains, leading to a closed-casket funeral that left loved ones mourning without realizing a stranger lay inside.
According to a lawsuit presented in Rhode Island Superior Court, Bell Funeral Home collected the body of Emilia L. Severino from Rhode Island Hospital, only to receive the incorrect remains. The lawsuit asserts that the funeral home did not confirm the identity of the body, nor did they open the body bag to check its contents. As a result, the family unknowingly conducted a graveside, closed-casket burial, believing they were laying their beloved mother to rest, when in reality, it was someone else.
The family states unequivocally, “The wrong body was buried.”
Emilia L. Severino, aged 75, was admitted to the Trauma Intensive Care Unit (TICU) at Rhode Island Hospital on December 25, 2025, following injuries from a fire and smoke inhalation. Despite medical efforts, she succumbed to her injuries five days later, and her body was transferred to the hospital’s morgue.
The lawsuit highlights that Severino’s body was left with medical equipment attached, specifically a catheter and its associated bandage, and was only partially clothed at the time of the transfer.
Turning to Providence-based Bell Funeral Home for the funeral arrangements, Severino’s family completed necessary documentation, including a form titled “Authorization for Transfer, Embalming, Other Preparation, Removal of Medical Devices and Identification.” However, the family points out that one critical section went unchecked, which was meant to confirm whether they had identified the body, leaving the responsibility for any identity mistakes unaddressed.
On Jan. 15, 2026, Bell Funeral Home allegedly “picked up what Defendant Rhode Island Hospital wrongly represented was Emilia Severino’s body.”
A form from the Providence hospital attached to the lawsuit shows hospital employees’ signatures identifying the body as Severino’s, the family contends.
In the ensuing days, the funeral home reportedly asked the family to choose clothing for Severino to be buried in and to drop those clothes off with them, an advisement that the family followed. The funeral home also allegedly “placed the hospital’s white body bag that had the remains believed to be Emilia Severino into a black body bag,” and then placed the black body bag into a casket.
“Bell Funeral Home never contacted the family to visually identify the remains and confirm that they were in fact Emilia Severino,” nor did its workers identify the remains themselves, the lawsuit states. When two family members went “to attempt to visually identify the remains,” the funeral home refused their request, telling them the body “was too decomposed,” which was not true, according to the family.
The lawsuit alleges that the real reason behind the refusal was that Bell Funeral Home “did not want the family to see” that, instead of dressing Severino’s body in the family’s chosen clothes, they had “dropped the new clothes – still on hangers and still with all tags on them – into the casket on top of the black body bag.” Were they to have opened the white body bag, they would have seen “a license, toe tag, and similar tags that clearly identified the body as someone other than Emilia Severino.”
Then came the day of the burial, on Jan. 19, 2026. From the lawsuit, at length:
[T]he family held a closed casket graveside burial of their beloved mother, Emilia Severino, not knowing as they grieved that it was some other body in the casket.
At the burial, Bell Funeral Home had trouble with the closed casket as a piece of cloth or other material was keeping the lid from securing properly.
As Bell Funeral Home attempted to fix this they needed to lift the closed casket’s lid, and the grieving family saw that inside the casket was a completely zipped up black body bag, and the clothes they had lovingly bought to have their mother dressed in had just been dumped on top of the body bag, with all the tags and hangers still on the new clothes.
The family still did not know that these remains they were grieving with and for were not in fact their mother.
Eventually Bell Funeral Home fixed the issue with sealing the casket, and the remains the family thought were their mother, Emilia Severino, were buried.
The next day, Rhode Island Hospital “made the family aware that the hospital had provided the funeral home the wrong body,” the lawsuit adds, saying the health center allegedly only came to that realization after a different funeral home asked for the body misidentified as Severino.
The family further alleges that Rhode Island Hospital and Bell Funeral Home “had initially wanted to just ‘switch’ the bodies without telling the family,” but the cemetery would not exhume the body without Severino’s family’s permission. The family ended up granting permission; the body was exhumed, and Severino’s family members went back to the hospital to identify their mother’s body.
Bell Funeral Home then “unceremoniously, without proper decorum or respect,” drove a body bag of Severino’s remains back to the cemetery, dropped it into the casket, and she was buried.
The family contends that as a result of “negligence” by the hospital and funeral home, its members have been left “shocked” with “severe emotional distress” and “extreme mental anguish.” They say the defendants “have taken” from them “their ability to properly mourn, grieve and bury their mother with respect and honor as they send their loving mother to the other side.”
They seek a jury trial.
In a statement to Providence-based NBC affiliate WJAR, Rhode Island Hospital said that once it became aware of the mistake, “the hospital immediately initiated a comprehensive internal review. As a result of that review, the employee involved was let go. While Rhode Island Hospital has strict policies and procedures governing all morgue operations, we are committed to strengthening our processes, including implementing additional safeguards, to ensure this does not happen again.”
Bell Funeral Home reportedly did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
