As the Chicago Department of Buildings conducted an inspection Friday morning at the South Side funeral home where 55 decomposing bodies were found in August, activists and a family impacted by the discovery called for the building’s demolition.
“This is a house of horrors we’re standing next to,” said Lisette Guillen, a crisis responder with Case Files Chicago. “The way families feel — the way most of Chicago and the surrounding areas feel — is it probably should be knocked down.”
The inspection comes over two months after authorities ordered the building shut down after the decaying bodies were found by police acting on a tip.
Guillen cited a number of hazards both for impacted families and the immediate surrounding community to justify demolishing the building.
“There’s children that are here. There’s pets that walk on the grass and take things back inside the home,” Guillen said. “We don’t know what the area around may have been exposed to.”
Over six months after her mother Shawnese Shannon died from advanced cancer, Marshawna Campbell and her family are still left with questions and uncertainty.
When Campbell learned that the man who had picked up her mother’s body from hospice had been accused of mishandling human remains, she and her sister opened their mother’s urn and began to question everything after finding cremated remains that looked like chunks of white substance.
“All of our questions are still unanswered,” Campbell told reporters outside the funeral home Friday morning. “We couldn’t even celebrate my mama being gone for six months because we don’t know if it’s her in the urn.”
A lack of information from police has left Campbell frustrated, and her voice cracked as she questioned how Clark and Johanna Morgan, the owners of the funeral home, allowed the conditions.
“What if it was you in our shoes?” Campbell said. “All y’all did was burn her skin and break her bones. I could’ve done that myself.”
Inspectors were inside the building for over 30 minutes and came out around 10:45 a.m. without speaking, and the city’s Department of Buildings, which dispatched the inspectors, did not respond to a request for comment about what they saw or whether there was any communication with the Morgans.
Also at the site of the inspection was Ald. Peter Chico (10th) and an SUV believed to be registered to Clark Morgan, though it could not be confirmed whether he or his wife were there.
Chico also did not respond to a request for comment about the inspection.
The Department of Buildings said in a statement that inspectors from the department’s electrical, new construction, plumbing and demolition bureaus were at Friday’s inspection, and that they will present findings in court on Oct. 29 during a hearing.
“The Department of Buildings recognizes the deep pain the families are experiencing, and our thoughts remain with them as this process moves forward. Today’s inspection was conducted pursuant to a court order requiring the Department to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the building,” the department said.
City inspects funeral home where 55 decaying bodies were found amid calls for its demolition 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-10-24 02:32:34
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