The family of a teenager killed in a robbery say Oasis Funeral and Cremation on the Aldine Mail Route lost their 19-year-old’s hair

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Grief aside, the family of a recently murdered 19-year-old man is now frustrated with a north Harris County funeral home they said lost his hair.

Anastasia Kindle said that after her cousin Kenneth Thomas was killed, their family decided to keep his hair as a keepsake.

Thomas was killed during a robbery on Kirk Street in the Fifth Ward on August 26.

“It was very heartbreaking because it was so traumatic,” said Thomas’ cousin, Lakisha Johnson. “How he died was not asked.”

The family said Thomas’ hair was braided at the time of his death. Other family members planned to braid her hair into theirs.

“It will never die as long as we’re here,” Kindle said.

Kindle said they asked Oasis Funeral and Cremation on Aldine Mail Route to save her hair before cremation.

Weeks later, when they received the hair, the family said it was very obviously not his.

They contacted the funeral home, which eventually admitted it wasn’t Thomas’ hair and said they couldn’t find his.

“We don’t have it anymore,” Johnson said. “We don’t have that piece of him. That was the one part of him that we decided to keep, that we wanted to keep in the family, to keep him alive. We don’t and it hurts. it’s not right at end of the day.”

Because of this confusion, the family wondered if the ashes were given to the right person.

ABC13 spoke with the owner of Oasis Funeral and Cremation, who admitted that Thomas’ family received the wrong person’s hair. She said they had another individual at the time who had similar hair, and Thomas’ family was given one of the other person’s two bags of hair.

She said she had recently had construction work on her unit and believed she had been displaced. She said she is still looking for him.

“I take responsibility for the problem that occurred,” Roberson said. “No matter how hard you try to make everything perfect, sometimes things still slip through the cracks.”

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