Corpse Kept in Car With AC on After Being Refused by Hospital Morgue

— -- The owner of an Australian funeral home says she was forced to keep a dead body in her car overnight with the air conditioning turned on because the morgue wouldn't accept the corpse, according to the North West Telegraph.

Joanne Cummings, co-owner of Pilbara Funeral Services, told the Australian newspaper she burned through three tanks of gas keeping the corpse cool because the Hedland Health Campus refused the body for being "too fat."

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The body weighed more than 440 pounds. The hospital said it only has the equipment to store bodies up to about 330 pounds.

"It's a load of crap. ... I could probably put a baby elephant in one of those fridges and it'd fit through the door, and they're refusing entry for a human being," Cummings told the North West Telegraph. "My issue is if that was your father, mother, partner ... you wouldn't want them refused entry into the mortuary."

Cummings also took issue with the staff's use of the word "fat."

A staff member "walked out and looked at this gentlemen in the back of the car and said, 'He's too fat, he can't go in the fridge' -- you can't say things like that," she said of a similar incident last year. "Imagine if this was your mother."

The hospital said it would meet with staff at the funeral home to develop a system to store larger dead bodies, according to the newspaper.