The family of Jermaine Richards has filed a negligence lawsuit against Cook County and its Medical Examiner's Office after learning that Richards' body sat in the county morgue, unidentified, for nearly two years. His remains were pulled from Lake Michigan in April 2022, but relatives say they only discovered he was at the Cook County facility when a family member recognized one of his tattoos in a photo on the office's unidentified persons webpage. The complaint, filed July 14, 2026, seeks compensation for the family's grief and argues that county systems failed to match a missing person report with the remains that had been in storage the whole time.
According to ABC7 Chicago, the family says Richards was found in Lake Michigan in late April 2022 but was not formally identified at the morgue until July 2024, even though a missing person report had been filed in January 2024. The lawsuit claims the Medical Examiner's Office failed to take timely, reasonable steps to work with investigators and notify next of kin. "We don't want any other family to have to go through with this," said Edward Jenkins, Richards' uncle. Richards' father, Tommie, told reporters he had no idea his son was in the morgue all that time.
How the medical examiner posts unidentified remains
The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office says it maintains an online Unidentified Persons listing and hosts an annual Missing Persons Day where families can review photographs, case summaries, and other details that might help with identifications. The office describes those public tools as part of a broader identification effort that also involves coordination with law enforcement agencies and federal partners when extra testing is needed. Advocates and relatives acknowledge that the listings and events can be useful, but say gaps in communication and cross-agency follow-up still leave some families waiting far too long for answers.
The lawsuit and county response
The Richards family's complaint names both Cook County and the Medical Examiner's Office, accusing them of negligence in how they handled identification and notification, and seeks damages for "grief and anguish." Cook County has responded with a motion to dismiss the case, according to ABC7 Chicago. The station reports that officials say the remains arrived without any identification, that staff relied on fingerprints and dental records, and that Illinois State Police testing of a DNA sample came back inconclusive. As the family's attorney told ABC7 Chicago, "it's hard to understand how a body remained unidentified for over two years."
Community fallout and possible reforms
The Richards lawsuit lands amid growing frustration from community members and advocates who say this is not an isolated problem. Other families have publicly described similar notification gaps at the county morgue, and organizers have staged protests outside the medical examiner's offices. Some lawmakers are floating potential legislation aimed at tightening notification rules and scaling back certain legal protections for agencies in these situations. Local outlets and advocacy groups, including The TRiiBE, have followed parents' efforts to push for reforms and hold county officials to account.
Legal implications
If the Richards case survives Cook County's motion to dismiss, it could become a test of how courts interpret the duties and immunities of county agencies in situations where remains go unidentified and relatives say they were never told. "The legal hurdles are very stringent," an attorney told The TRiiBE, underscoring how difficult it can be for plaintiffs to prevail in civil suits against public entities. For now, the complaint will move through pretrial motions and, if the judge allows it to proceed, into discovery.
Court filings show Cook County is asking a judge to throw out the lawsuit at an early stage, while the Richards family says it plans to keep pushing for transparency and for changes to how unidentified remains are tracked and matched so that other relatives do not face a similar ordeal. Attorneys for both sides say that if the case does survive the motion to dismiss, more documents and depositions are likely to follow.
