Mom says UPS lost her 15-year-old son’s ashes: ‘He ain’t here’

HIRAM, Ga. (WSB) - A Georgia mother says she shipped her 15-year-old son’s ashes from a UPS store to a family member, but the package never made it.

Mother Tangenika Lee says she feels like she’s lost her 15-year-old son, Deontray, all over again after his death from a fentanyl overdose in 2020. His remains are now unaccounted for after she tried shipping them to her sister, who was making a custom cremation urn.

“If you ask me, it’s just like a repeating nightmare,” Lee said. “I cremated him because I had not seen him in seven whole years. So, I cremated him, so that he could be right here with me, and we could travel together and do things together – and he ain’t here.”

Lee says she shipped Deontray’s boxed ashes along with some gifts from a UPS store in Hiram, Georgia, to her sister’s address in Connecticut in early January. The package was supposed to arrive by Jan. 10.

Weeks passed, but the package was never delivered.

Lee called police about the missing package and went back to the UPS store to ask if they knew what happened to it.

“I went inside of the store and pulled cameras from January the 8th, and they came back out to tell me that that package actually had left their facility, and it was nothing that they could do about it,” Lee said.

She says UPS sent her a $135 check as compensation. She’s refusing to cash it.

“I just lost it. I started crying,” Lee said. “He ain’t here. He not here. I don’t know where he at.”

Lee says the store manager told her the package was last tracked to a UPS distribution center in Connecticut. She’s now planning to go there to look for her son.

Lee says she told store employees that her son’s ashes were in the package. However, UPS said in a statement it does not accept shipments of human remains, and the package’s contents were declared by the customer as “clothes.”

“Unfortunately, the package was lost,” read the statement in part. “We extend our deepest sympathy to the family and our heartfelt thoughts are with them during this time.”