A woman from Georgia made the trip to Connecticut on Thursday to search for her son’s missing ashes.
Tangenika Lee is from the Atlanta area, and said on Jan. 8, she shipped a box containing her son’s ashes, clothing, necklaces and an iPad to her sister’s home in Waterbury.
“She makes the urns, so she was gonna make one for me special,” Lee said.
But she said the package never arrived.
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“The first day finding out the package was just lost,” Lee said. “It was like I lost my son. I lost him. I lost him all over again.”
Lee said she went back to that UPS store in Georgia with a police officer who reviewed surveillance video from that day.
“They said that they’d seen on January 8 that the package went out,” she said, adding that they tracked it all the way to Connecticut to a distribution center.
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Lee said she received a check for $135 as compensation from UPS.
“That was an insult and slap in my face cause he was worth way more than that,” Lee said.
In a statement to NBC Connecticut, UPS stressed that the package was labeled as clothing and that they don't accept packages containing human remains.
“We continue to extend our sympathies to the family for their loss and are deeply sorry that after working diligently, we were unable to locate the package,” a spokesperson for UPS said in the statement. “We recognize that no amount of money would compensate for the loss of a loved one’s ashes, which is one of the most important reasons UPS declines to transport human remains. We have reimbursed the estimated value of the package’s contents, which was labeled as containing clothing.”
The loss hit her particularly hard because she said she spent seven years incarcerated, and lost that time with her son. When she was released, she worked to get custody back, but then her son passed away.
“I got him cremated because I’ve been gone seven years. I didn’t get that time with him,” she said. “So, I wanted him to travel and…I made a whole change in my life. He didn’t get to see it.”
Lee is now offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who can help her find that box with her son’s remains.
“Just return it. That’s it,” she said. “I’m OK because I know he’s been gone a long time, four years, and I have dealt with him being gone, but not again. I don’t care about the package. Just lead me to the remains of my son.”
If you have any information on the package’s whereabouts, you can contact UPS customer service at 1-888-742-5877 or customerrelations@ups.com.
