From her modest home made of cinder blocks in Venezuela, Arelis Coromoto Villegas prayed to God on a daily basis for two months that seemed to go on forever. She asked God to protect her daughter, who was 21 years old at the time, as she traveled thousands of miles through dangerous jungle and desert terrain in order to reach the southern border of the United States of America.
Her prayers were granted in September 2022 when Aurimar Iturriago Villegas crossed into the United States without incident and went north with her own prayer, which was to get a work and eventually earn enough money to assist her mother in constructing a new home.
In spite of this, Aurimar was killed in a road rage incident near Dallas while she was sitting in the back seat of a car. The tragedy occurred within two months of her arrival in Texas.
And then, for her mother, the inconceivable turned into the unfathomable in some way.
Aurimar’s body was donated to a local medical school by county authorities without her family’s knowledge. The body was then dismembered and dollar amounts were allocated to sections of her body that had not been harmed by the bullet that impacted her skull.
The torso of Aurimar was valued at $900, and her legs were valued at $703.
As her mother desperately tried to have her dead daughter returned to Venezuela, she was unaware that her body had become a commodity in the name of science.
Remnants of Aurimar’s body were cremated and buried in a field amid strangers at a cemetery in Dallas. All of this occurred while her mother was trying to get her daughter back to Venezuela.
Arelis did not learn that her daughter had been used for research until two years after her daughter’s death.
Aurimar’s situation was monetary in nature. As overworked local officials struggle with an increasing number of unclaimed deaths amid widespread opioid addiction, increased homelessness, and increasingly divided families, the remains of vulnerable people are frequently mishandled and their families’ wishes are ignored across the United States. Reporters discovered that before declaring bodies unclaimed, county coroners, hospitals, and other organizations sometimes neglected to get in touch with reachable family members.
As their loved ones reported them missing and looked for them, some people were buried in paupers’ fields. In others, bodies were shipped without permission to biotech firms, medical institutions, and for-profit body brokers.
According to financial records, Aurimar was one of approximately 2,350 individuals whose bodies were sent to the University of North Texas Health Science Center since 2019 under agreements with two nearby counties. This helped the center generate approximately $2.5 million annually and assisted the counties in saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on burial and cremation expenses.
Numerous corpses were utilized for research or training by students. Others were leased to medical technology firms that need human remains to train physicians and build goods. Some were used for both, such as Aurimar’s.
Donated corpses are essential to the biotechnology sector and medical education because they help researchers create potentially life-saving therapies and surgeons hone their craft.
Although it is still legal in many states, including Texas, to use unclaimed bodies for this reason, it is generally considered unethical due to the lack of consent and the suffering that survivors may endure.
Two dozen such examples have been reported by reporters, where families discovered that a relative’s remains had been donated to the Health Science Center weeks, months, or even years later.
In addition to Aurimar’s loved ones, eleven of those families only found out through Noticias Telemundo, including five. They were appalled to see their relatives’ names on the list of unclaimed bodies that the media outlets released this fall.
Texas Cop is Accused of Raping a Drunken Woman After Offering to Drive Her Home From a Bar
The Health Science Center promised to cease using unclaimed bodies, suspended its body donation program, and dismissed the administrators. In a statement to reporters, spokeswoman Andy North claimed that the center apologizes to all the “individuals and families impacted” and has “taken multiple corrective actions,” but he did not respond to inquiries regarding Aurimar’s case.
None of these applied to Aurimar. She spoke to her mother just hours before she passed away, and she was always in contact with her.
Falsely believing month after month that her remains were kept in a Dallas morgue, her family quickly rushed to scrounge together the thousands of dollars that would have been required to have her body transported to Venezuela.
Couple in Minnesota Accused of Locking their 4 Kids in Cages, Forcing Them to Use ‘Puke Bowl’
Arelis has battled to recover her daughter’s body during this ordeal, from a home without internet and in a nation with no diplomatic relations to the United States.
She claimed that she would not be able to start grieving till then.