Mississippi coroner who buried men without telling their families: ‘I don’t know how to find people’

RAYMOND, Miss. – Gretchen Hankins came to the Hinds County pauper’s field Friday morning for her son’s body, and for answers. She got neither. Hankins’ son, Jonathan David Hankins, 39, died of a drug overdose in May 2022, and his body went unclaimed for more than a year as family, friends and police searched for him. Without anyone notifying his mother of his death, he was buried in a grave marked only with a number: 645. He was one of several men who were buried without their families being told, triggering widespread public outrage after NBC News exposed the issue last year.

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