This Is Sad But There Is More…
By: Tommy “Tj” Sotomayor

Re’Asia Washington’s family claims that Shawn Johnson Funeral and Cremation neither embalmed nor refrigerated the child’s body properly.

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — The family of an 11-year-old girl who died in late January has filed a complaint with the state against a Riviera Beach funeral home, saying it failed to preserve the girl’s remains and allowed her body to decay in the days before a planned memorial service.

Re’Asia Washington’s family claims that Shawn Johnson Funeral and Cremation — known for its services for many of Palm Beach County’s homicide victims and the subject of a 2018 Palm Beach Post profile — neither embalmed nor refrigerated the child’s body properly, allowing it to reach a state of severe decomposition.

The family filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Financial Services’ Division of Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services, said Pierre Ifill, Re’Asia’s uncle and a Georgia-based attorney.

A spokesperson for the agency confirmed Tuesday that it has an open investigation into Shawn Johnson Funeral and Cremation, but did not specify what sparked the investigation, when it began or what about the business the agency is investigating.

Multiple attempts to reach Johnson or a representative of the funeral home were unsuccessful.

State records list Johnson, whose legal first name is Shandelrio, Ronald Warnecke and Alterraon Phillips as the funeral home’s managers. Their license to operate a funeral establishment is valid through November 2020 under the licensee name RWS Funeral Services LLC. The business also has a licensed funeral director and embalmer, Adrienne Leger.

On Monday afternoon, the glass doors to the business on East 30th Street were locked. Riviera Beach Fire Rescue had posted a notice of inspection on one of the doors but did not specify what it was inspecting. An agency spokesman did not return telephone calls.

Re’Asia, a fifth-grade student at Everglades Elementary School in suburban West Palm Beach, suffered a fatal asthma attack Jan. 22 during a family trip to Savannah, Georgia, Ifill, speaking on behalf of his family, told The Post, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Ifill said the family hired Johnson’s business to return Re’Asia’s body from Georgia and prepare her remains. But when the child’s mother viewed the remains during a visit to the funeral home Thursday, she found them to be unrecognizable.

“She noticed that (her) child looked nothing like herself,” Ifill said. “Her whole body had decayed significantly. It led us to believe that the body had not been properly preserved.”

Re’Asia’s mother posted a video Friday morning on Facebook from outside the funeral home detailing the unrecognizable state in which she found her daughter.

“All I wanted to do was sit and have some time with my child,” she said in the video. “But you denied me that right.”

As of Wednesday morning, the video had been viewed more than 160,000 times.

A spokesperson for the city’s police department confirmed that officers went to the funeral home Friday morning in response to Re’Asia’s family. He said the department is aware of the allegations against the funeral home but did not consider the case to be a criminal matter at this point.

Ifill said the family learned through an expert who viewed the body that it had not been properly embalmed or refrigerated. He described Re’Asia’s body as having become “mummified,” with pieces of skin peeling off.

The family was forced to cancel a viewing and instead held a memorial service without Re’Asia’s body on Saturday, he said.

“As an uncle, I’m heartbroken,” Ifill said. “I’m saddened. I’m angry. I’ve got so much emotion running through me.”

From a 1989 case: Skeletal remains found in search for missing Michigan teen

The Post’s 2018 profile featured Johnson speaking of working as a woman in a male-dominated industry. She was pictured in a 2015 calendar featuring female morticians, the “Mortician Moms,” and is part of a network of women, the “Funeral Divas,” who ran their own funeral homes.

In the 2018 Post interview, Johnson said she believed women may hold back from working in the funeral home industry for fear of being described as “creepy” if they like the work. But she said she saw her work as an opportunity to connect with families and help them through a difficult time.

“To give them other things to focus on besides just their family member lying in the coffin, I can say it means more to me than any dollar amount,” she said.

In recent years, the funeral home has performed services for many homicide victims, complete with personalized caskets, picture banners and balloons. The home handled services for one of Re’Asia’s uncles, Steven Simon, who was fatally shot in a car last July in what Riviera Beach police described as a targeted attack.

However, Ifill said he has been contacted in recent days by other families who have complained about the way the funeral home handled their loved ones’ remains. Ifill said his firm will work with local law firms to look into the complaints.

“We definitely intend to investigate this, along with other cases,” he said. “We’re going to hold them accountable to the full extent of the law, civilly and criminally.”

Ifill described Re’Asia as a “genius” who made straight A’s in school. She wanted to become a pediatrician, he said.

During the family trip to Georgia, Re’Asia volunteered serving food during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event organized by Ifill’s law firm.

“Her last act on this earth was serving the community,” he said.