CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Corpus Christi mom wants answers from the Nueces County Medical Examiner’s Office, questioning whether she was given her son's remains.
According to documents from the medical examiner’s office, they kept the body of 57-year-old Tyrone Campbell Junior for twelve days. Inia Campbell said that time should have been used to properly determine how her son died.
"You know, you're serving a huge community and you have to be trustworthy,” Campbell said. “If you can't be trustworthy, who are you to be working on our loved ones."
Tyrone died on November 17, 2021.
“I didn't know what was wrong with him,” his mom said.
Campbell said the day after her son died, she went to the funeral home with her daughter to make arrangements.
“They said, 'he's not here'. I said, 'what do you mean? You picked him up yesterday.' They said, 'well the ME picked him up because there's was something suspicious that they don't know why he died'," Campbell said.
She said she was relieved and hoped she would get answers as to what led to his death, especially when the medical examiner’s investigators came to her home twice.
"They asked, 'What did he die from?' I told them, ‘I don't know and I said, ‘I think cancer, but I'm not sure,” Campbell said.
Six months before he died, Campbell's son told her he just wanted her to take care of him.
"He said 'I've been to the doctor and I'm not going back again', and he made me promise not to take him to a nursing home or anywhere and if I would just let him die here," Campbell said.
She kept that promise, caring for him until his death. It wouldn't be until she saw KRIS 6’s investigation into the medical examiner's office, that she requested Tyrone's autopsy record on January 26.
"I was totally stunned,” Campbell said.
The report details a healed nine-inch surgical scar on the mid-abdomen. Campbell said she bathed her son in the final days of his life and he had no scar.
"He has no nine-inch scar, his ponytail was not nine to ten inches long, he had no surgical scars, no keloids,” Campbell said.
She also said there is no history of colon cancer like it says under 'final anatomic diagnoses'.
"So now I’ve had my son cremated and I have no answer why he died,” she said.
Answers she thinks she'll never get.
"You know, you just don't sign your name to important papers and you didn't do what you said you did or you didn't do what you were supposed to do,” Campbell said.
KRIS 6 reached out via email, phone and text to Shaker's attorney, Chris Gale, and asked him to help Campbell find answers.
As of Tuesday evening, Gale has not responded.
According to the autopsy report, chief medical examiner Adel Shaker conducted Tyrone Campbell Junior's autopsy. An internal examination wasn't done, only an external one.
The report listed a history of colon cancer, which his mom said there is none. KRIS 6 will keep looking into how Shaker arrived at his conclusion and update the story.
