TSA Heroes Toss Cremated Remains

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TSA desecrates woman’s ashen remains during warrantless urn search

Unapologetic blueshirts dump ashes into a man’s suitcase and send it on its way.

(Source: AP / Getty Images)

CLEVELAND, OH — A man is suing the Transportation Security Administration because he says that TSA agents opened up a sealed urn and spilled his mother’s ashen remains into his suitcase.

On Friday, October 5, 2012, Mr. Shannon Thomas made a scheduled airline trip from Cleveland to Puerto Rico, with an intermediate stop in Washington, D.C.  The Ohio man was making the trip to fulfill his deceased mother’s wishes of spreading her cremated ashes into the Caribbean Sea.

Mr. Thomas alleges that prior to making the trip, he purchased a “very heavy and sturdy” urn, placed his mother’s ashes inside, and diligently ensured that the urn was sealed.  He even “applied force” and “repeatedly tested” the urn to ensure that it was sealed, according to his complaint.  He then packed the urn in his suitcase, carefully surrounding it with clothing.

The bereaved man alleged that after handing his suitcase off to the baggage check station at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, TSA agents “detained, opened, and inspected” his luggage and opened it up.  During the warrantless search, federal agents unpacked his things, unscrewed the urn, and “negligently, carelessly, and recklessly replaced the lid,” then repacked it, the lawsuit states.

Mr. Thomas only learned of the act of desecration when he arrived in Puerto Rico, opened his suitcase, and found his mother’s ashes “spilled on his clothing and interior of his suitcase.”  The disturbing mess was accompanied by a TSA baggage inspection notice.

To top off his mental anguish, Mr. Thomas alleged that “no person speaking on behalf of the United States or TSA has ever issued an apology” in the two years since the incident occurred.   In October 2014, Thomas filed his lawsuit against the TSA in federal court, alleging emotional distress, property damage, and “outrageous disturbance of human remains.”

SOURCE: Thomas v. the Transportation Security Administration

11 COMMENTS

  1. Doctor Who and Amy Pond have transported Van Gogh to a modern day art gallery. In Van Gogh’s time, he’s a failure who is despised by his village and has sold only one painting for a pittance in his entire life. Vincent is one year away from committing suicide in 1890…

    [Outside the Museé]

    VINCENT: Where are we?
    DOCTOR: Paris, 2010 AD. And this is the mighty Museé D’Orsay, home to many of the greatest paintings in history.
    VINCENT: Oh, that’s wonderful.
    (Two lads walk past listening to a radio.)
    DOCTOR: Ignore that. I’ve got something more important to show you.

    [Museé d’Orsay]

    (They enter the van Gogh exhibition.)
    DOCTOR: Doctor Black, we met a few days ago. I asked you about the church at Auvers. I just wondered, between you and me, in a hundred words, where do you think Van Gogh rates in the history of art?

    BLACK: Well, big question, but to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly, the most popular great painter of all time. The most beloved. His command of colour, the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world. No one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.

    (Vincent bursts into tears.)
    DOCTOR: Vincent. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Is it too much?
    VINCENT: No. They are tears of joy. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
    (Vincent kisses Doctor Black on both cheeks and hugs him.)
    This changes everything. I’ll step out tomorrow with my easel on my back a different man. I still can’t believe that one of the haystacks was in the museum. How embarrassing.

    DOCTOR: It’s been a great adventure and a great honour.
    VINCENT: You’ve turned out to be the first doctor ever actually to make a difference to my life.
    DOCTOR: I’m delighted. I won’t ever forget you.
    VINCENT: And you are sure marriage is out of the question?
    AMY: This time. I’m not really the marrying kind. Come on. Let’s go back to the gallery right now.

    [Outside the Museé]

    AMY: Time can be re-written. I know it can. Come on! Oh, the long life of Vincent Van Gogh. There’ll be hundreds of new paintings.
    DOCTOR: I’m not sure there will.

    [Museé d’Orsay]

    AMY: Come on!
    BLACK [OC]: We have here the last work of Vincent Van Gogh, who committed suicide at only thirty seven. He is now acknowledged to be one of the foremost artists of all time. If you follow me now.

    AMY: So you were right. No new paintings. We didn’t make a difference at all.
    DOCTOR: I wouldn’t say that. The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things. And, if you look carefully, maybe we did indeed make a couple of little changes.

    http://www.chakoteya.net/doctorwho/31-10.htm
    http://www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/videos/vincent-van-gogh-visits-the-museum/

    (Amy goes over to the Still Life with Twelve Sunflowers. It has For Amy, Vincent written on the vase.)
    AMY: If we had got married, our kids would have had very, very red hair.
    DOCTOR: The ultimate ginger.
    AMY: The ultimate ginge. Brighter than sunflowers.

      • allons-y!

        Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Greatest Catch Phrases

        What’s it doing?
        It’s feeling the sun on itself.
        It’s getting warm.
        The chick flies away
        and the eggshell disintegrates.
        Harmless.
        Did you know?

        You made your decision.
        Humanity made its choice.
        No, we ignored humanity.
        Well, there you go.
        So what happens now, then?
        Tell me what happens now.

        In the mid-21st century…
        ..humankind starts creeping off
        into the stars.
        Spreads its way
        through the galaxy…
        to the very edges of the universe.
        And it…
        endures till the end of time.

        And it does all that because,
        one day, in the year 2049,
        when it had stopped thinking
        about going to the stars,
        something occurred that
        make it look up, not down.
        It looked out there
        into the blackness
        and it saw something beautiful,
        something wonderful…
        ..that for once
        it didn’t want to destroy.

        And in that one moment,
        the whole course of history
        was changed.
        Oh, my gosh.
        It laid a new egg.
        It’s beautiful.
        Doctor, it’s beautiful.
        That’s what we call a new moon.

        Doctor Who – Kill the Moon

  2. Time to burn these brownshirts out….
    But there are no American men any more – only a few “metrosexuals”, and lots of women. (No offense intended to anyone here.)

    That’s an old truism, though: Where wealth accumulates, men decay.
    There’s a big difference between being hungry, knowing you have to go hunt and trap something to eat it, and then gut it, and dress it, and cook it…
    Vs. Go to McDonalds and get mystery meat, but the tummy feels better…

    It makes for a complete LACK of character.

    • I agree, Jean.

      Guilty.

      What keeps me from doing more than trying to call attention to the erupting police state (and why it’s erupting)?

      I have – to paraphrase Lewis in Deliverance: A nice wife, nice job (well sort) of…

      • Yeah, pot, meet kettle, you’re black. 😛

        Still mulling.

        Most people want to wait… Wait…. Wait….. Consider some more, surrender some more, and then wait… And wait, etc, etc, etc.
        And incrementally, they turn into Clovers…. Gerneationally, mind, not individually.
        But they won’t see it, they’re children who have no depth nor understanding beyond their make-work position.

        How many have smelled their own flesh burning? Likely few. (I f*cked up, it was NOT fun.)
        It does NOT smell like BBQ.

        But such knowledge changes your viewpoint.
        As does getting sliced open by a screwdriver – no sharpening, not a makeshift weapon – just turned the wrong way, at a bad angle, and a while later – you notice blood all over…. But you never felt anything…

        But there’s the cut! 😛

        clover has lived an insulated life, and is happy that way. Has not been down 42nd street when it was the red-light district. Can’t see the difference between 42nd street and Lincoln Center, because Lincoln Center is the only place he’s ever been. (Think Sex and the City girls. No clue of real life, but lots of ideas on how to define Mr. Right. He’s tall, strong, brilliant, a multi-billionaire who lives on the interest of his self-created wealth, no restrictions on what he wants to do, he’s socially approved, high-status, a “handyman,” salt-of-the-earth, but a gentleman, refined tastes, could have any woman he wanted, and yet he wants her (and must prove himself to her, but finally wins her over.)

        Anyway: Point was, fantasy vs. reality. Don’t think I can withdraw from reality enough – too much charred flesh, scars, injuries (Still steady at only 43 stitches to date! Which is still more than years I’ve been alive. :-P)

        Can’t ask fire to be wet, or water to burn… 😉 a thing is what it is, and we’re subject to the mores of our time.

        But I’m becoming more and more a Rebel without a care.
        Example: Dad died last year, December, I think – no, I can’t recall, it’s all one big blur.
        His estate is still being held up by the fucking state government, when it all went to my Mom – the state wants to see if it can tax the estate.
        For spousal survival, mind!

        When surrounded by incompetence, one can make allowances.
        When surrounded by evil, one either responds, fights, and survives or dies trying to prevail. There is NO middle ground, NO tolerance. You can’t be a “little bit pregnant.”
        Government can’t be a “little bit” evil.

        It’s evil to the core.
        The problem is opening the willfully blind’s eyes, and they don’t WANT to see….

  3. Nothing is safe from these blue shirted parasites, they were probably hoping there was cash or jewels they could then confiscate,as in steal, for themselves. I got one of those notes in one of my bags a few years ago, didn’t have any valuables in there since I’d read about how much stuff vanishes thanks to these maggots but I pack very specifically (ok, I admit it, analy) and was quite pissed to find everything tossed around. Should pack a suitcase real tightly with dogshit and put that on the belt for them to “inspect”.

    • I have a friend who travels frequently who leaves soiled underwear with “skid marks” on top for the maglees (maggots/leeches) to paw through.

      • They’re tryin’ real hard to stop you guys from flying anywhere in the USSA. Here in outback Oz, we get on a plane to a major city, no checks of any kind until we land, then BAM!

        Immediate bomb check. WTF?

        Just beware that feces may be considered a controlled substance, especially in large amounts liberally smeared inside the suitcase maliciously, but in that case, your rebuttal should be that every TSA agent is full of it.. 😉

        • Hi Rev,

          That’s bizarre!

          But, only from a certain (naive) point of view – i.e., that the object of the exercise is “preventing terrorism.” We know, of course, that the true object is terrorizing the citizenry. To habituate them to arbitrary searches and violations of their personal space by government goons.

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