Funeral home mix-up leaves grieving family without treasured keepsake of killed 19-year-old

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- On top of grief, the family of a recently killed 19-year-old is now feeling frustrated towards a north Harris County funeral home that they said lost his hair.

Anastasia Kindle said after her cousin, Kenneth Thomas, was killed, their family decided to keep his hair as a keepsake.

Thomas was killed during a robbery on Kirk Street in the Fifth Ward on Aug. 26.

"It was very heartbreaking because it was so traumatic," Thomas' cousin Lakisha Johnson said. "How he died was uncalled for."

The family said that Thomas's hair was styled in wicks at the time of his death. Other members of the family planned to weave his hair into theirs.

"He'll never die as long as we're here," Kindle said.

Kindle said they asked the Oasis Funeral and Cremation on Aldine Mail Route to save his hair before his cremation.

Weeks later, when they received the hair, the family said it was very obviously not his.

They contacted the funeral home, which eventually admitted that it was not Thomas' hair and said they could not find his.

"We don't have it anymore," Johnson said. "We don't have that piece of him. That was the only part of him that we decided to keep, that we wanted to keep in the family, to keep him alive. We don't have it, and it hurts. It is not right at the end of the day."

Because of this mix-up, the family questioned if they were given the correct person's ashes.

ABC13 spoke to the owner of Oasis Funeral and Cremation, who admitted that Thomas' family was given the wrong person's hair. She said they had another individual at the time who had similar hair, and Thomas' family was given one of the other individual's two bags of hair.

She said she recently had construction at her facility and believes it got misplaced. She said she is still looking for it.

"I take accountability for the issue that happened, I do," Roberson said. "As much as you try to do everything perfect, sometimes things still slip between the cracks."

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