Pubdate: Wed, 25 Apr 2018
Source: Kansas City Star (MO)
Copyright: 2018 The Kansas City Star
Contact:  http://www.kansascity.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/221
Author: Lisa Gutierrez

MAINE POLICE THOUGHT POWDER WAS HEROIN. IT WAS HUMAN ASHES

After a car crash Saturday in Manchester, Maine, police seized 48
grams of a white powdery substance found in the glove compartment.

It looked like heroin to them.

It was a dead man's ashes.

They were the cremated remains of Robert Clinton Curtis Sr., the
father of Kevin Curtis, the owner of the car.

Robert Curtis, a native of Maine, was 75 when he died on March 12,
2013, at his home in Florida after a brief illness, according to his
obituary. A fan of the outdoors, he had eight sons, three daughters,
29 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

"The kids were really mad when they found out that (the police) took
Grandpa, but I tried to make a joke of it," Kevin Curtis, of Augusta,
Maine, told the Kennebec Journal.

"I said, 'This is the first time he's ever been in lockup and we'll
just get him out.'"

Curtis had loaned his Chevrolet Impala to a friend to go to the
grocery store. He didn't know his friend, Jess Legendre, was driving
with a suspended license.

Legendre crashed the car into a utility pole and ended up in a ditch,
the newspaper reported. While looking in the glove box for paperwork
to show authorities, Legendre appeared to pass out.

Emergency responders thought he was under the influence of drugs and
gave him opioid overdose-reversing Narcan. When the news of the crash
first came out, it was reported by The New York Post and other
publications with headlines proclaiming that a man crashed a car while
overdosing on heroin.

Sheriff's deputies confiscated two small bags of powder they found in
the glove box.

On Tuesday, Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason confirmed that the
powder was human ashes, noting to local reporters that a glove
compartment was "a rather unusual manner in which to keep the remains
of a loved one, for sure."

Curtis said his sister had given him the ashes recently and he's
waiting for an urn he ordered. She has more of their father's ashes in
the trunk of her car because she's moving.

"I didn't want them if they were in the house, the kids ripping them
open and having them everywhere," he told the Journal.

He said some of the ashes spilled out during the crash; some landed on
his friend's pants.

Legendre was charged with operating a vehicle after habitual offender
revocation and falsifying physical evidence. Because there was no
evidence that he was under the influence of drugs at the time, there
reportedly were no drug-related charges.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt