Three people have been remanded in custody after allegedly attempting to remove tissue from a corpse during a private viewing at a funeral home in Browns Plains, south of Brisbane.
Esther Swanborough, who has run her family funeral business for 30 years, said the group arrived for an appointment to view the body of an elderly man. They allegedly brought scissors, scalpels and blades concealed in large backpacks.
Brian Wong, 47, Changmin Koo, 38, and Cassandra Hunter, 43, presented themselves as the deceased man’s son, a male relative and a female support friend respectively.
The trio were taken to the funeral home’s Still Waters Chapel for a private viewing. One of them then asked staff to leave, saying: “Please leave the chapel because we have cultural practices that we need to carry out.”
Ms Swanborough said such requests were not unusual because the business dealt with “240 cultures”, but she became concerned after a member of staff overheard Koo speaking Korean rather than Mandarin, the language spoken by Wong’s family.
She later returned to check on the group and said she saw what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with the body.
“Something very different was happening,” she said. “They were trying to remove something that would have been very obvious when he was moved from the viewing room … gloves were being put away.”
Ms Swanborough said she challenged the visitors by asking: “What have you done?” Police were then called, and the funeral parlour was declared a crime scene.
Police allege one of the men removed a piece of tissue from the body after the group entered the premises armed with sharp implements. Wong allegedly fled when confronted, while Hunter and Koo were arrested at the scene.
Wong was arrested at his family’s home in Browns Plains more than five hours later. All three were charged with misconduct with a corpse, entering premises with intent to commit an indictable offence, and being armed with intent to enter premises and commit an indictable offence.
They appeared before Brisbane Magistrates Court on Saturday and made no application for bail. Magistrate Peter Saggers said the bench charge sheets alleged that the group had entered the funeral home “whilst armed with scissors, scalpels, and blades to commit an offence” before, “without justification, interfered, namely, wounded a dead body”.
Wong was remanded to appear at Beenleigh Magistrates Court on November 12. Koo, who requires a Korean interpreter, is due back in court on November 10, while Hunter will appear by video link on December 7.
Ms Swanborough said the alleged incident had left her “shocked, horrified, mortified”, adding that neither she nor the business manager had seen anything similar during their 30 years in the funeral trade.
In a video posted on Facebook, she said other families being cared for at the time had not been affected and described it as “an isolated incident in our viewing room with family members”.
