MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – The Hunt family is mortified over a grave mistake made at the Caballero Rivera Dade North cemetery.
"It is terrible that people have to go through something like this," Keith Hunt said. "You put your loved one down and you expect them to be there eternally."
Years ago, the family purchased two double plots. Stepfather Ulysses Mitchell died and was buried in the plot in 1998. His wife, Johnnie Mae, was buried a row above him in 2012, but when their nephew died last fall, the family got a call as they were headed to the cemetery.
"We cannot bury my son into the hole because the plot we were going to bury him in already had a body," Daryl Hunt said.
Family members who care for and visit the gravesite often said they believe their parents' gravesites have been tampered with.
"Somebody shuffled the deck, essentially," attorney David Charlip said.
The family's attorney alleges the cemetery moved their stepfather over a plot to have a plausible excuse for the mistake.
"The real concern the family has is that there is another family out there whose loved one is not where he is supposed to be," Charlip said.
Cemetery officials kicked Local 10 News off the property while the Hunts were having the graves exhumed, despite the family's wishes.
It's not the first time the cemetery has had a gravesite mix-up. The grandmother of former NFL star receiver T.Y. Hilton was wrongly buried in an unmarked grave in 2015 and also had to be disinterred.
"It's like I'm going through three funerals and one again," Daryl Hunt said.