The SF Medical Examiner's Office declared a 50-year-old Tenderloin resident dead of an overdose in May 2021, sending his daughter the man’s ashes. But it turns out those were someone else’s ashes, the man was still alive, and the family is going through quite an ordeal.
The SF Medical Examiner's Office has had a doozy of a scandal or two over the years, from lab technicians stealing drugs from the pockets of dead patients, to that whole wild episode of a possibly falsified autopsy of former SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi. But the latest scandal is next-level, as the Chronicle reports they misidentified a dead body in 2021, sent the supposed victim's daughter someone's else's ashes, yet have now learned the man is still very much alive.
The man in question is James Robinson, who moved to San Francisco in 2019. He was struggling with drug addiction, but still had a relationship with his eldest daughter Kylie. Robinson was staying at the Dahlia Hotel in the Tenderloin in May 2021, and a man’s body was found in his room, dead from an overdose with a baggie of fentanyl and meth nearby. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that this man was James Robinson.
His daughter Kylie did not immediately have the $4,000 for his cremation, and needed a few days to get it together, so she did not get a chance to see the body before it was cremated. She eventually got the ashes, but never received the autopsy report. The family held a funeral, and Kylie got married without her father walking her down the aisle.
“We had zero suspicion,” she tells the Chronicle. “We put our faith in the medical examiner. We had never heard of something where they didn’t properly identify a body,” Meanwhile, Dahlia Hotel staff say Robinson and another friend had checked in one night, Robinson returned the next day, and died in the hotel that evening.
Fast forward to three years later in July 2024, and Kylie got a phone call from a friend who saw James Robinson alive and on the streets of San Francisco.
The Chronicle obtained the autopsy report that Kylie never received. Turns out the body had been missing the tip of one of its fingers, which was not the case with James Robinson. The tattoos on the body were not consistent with Robinson’s tattoos.
“It was a huge relief. I had so many mixed emotions,” Kylie told the Chron. “I was kind of scared. What condition is my dad in?”
Wildly, James Robinson was also arrested here in SF in November 2022. But the police just let him go, because his fingerprints showed he was dead.
Armed with the knowledge that their father was alive, family members walked the streets of SF for 12 hours on July 10. They found him that evening at Fifth and Market streets.
“Oh my God, Dad, we held a funeral for you,” Kylie told her father.
But there have been other massive consequences because of the shocking error. James Robinson lost his $900-a-month disability payments, because he was classified as dead. Even worse, one of his daughters who's still a minor was getting disability survivor’s payments, which the Social Security Administration is now trying to claw back.
“My dad didn’t have as severe an addiction before this mistake,” Kylie explains to the Chronicle. “There’s been a significant decline in his health over the three years.”
Once reunited, the family agreed that James would go to rehab. But he has since disappeared again. The family has tried several times to locate him, to no avail.
So whose ashes were sent to the daughter? The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) doesn't know. They have since reclaimed the ashes, and that person is now classified as “John Doe.”
“An OCME investigation misidentified a decedent as James Robinson in 2021, and we understand this is deeply troubling for his family,” office spokesperson Angela Yip told the Chronicle. “This does not reflect the high standards of our office, nor the level of service the people of San Francisco expect and deserve. We are committed to continuing to implement measures that ensure the integrity of our work.”
So does Kylie Robinson have a case to sue the city?
NBC Bay Area legal analyst Steven Clark says she could sue for negligence. “The primary recovery would be for the emotional distress and the lost years that she no longer had with her father,” he said.
Meeanwhile, there is a GoFundMe to help the family find James Robinson. “We are trying to help with what we can, but being very young we don’t have a lot to offer,” says a statement on that page. “We are also putting our faith into the city attorneys to make it right to our family.”
Image: SF Public Works
