ST CATHERINE, Jamaica – The burial of a late retired traffic cop had to be postponed on Tuesday as grave diggers were unable to fit the man’s casket into a plot at the Thetford Park Cemetery in Old Harbour, St Catherine.

Family members of retired police sergeant Devon Edwards Sr, who died in January, watched in horror at graveside as funeral workers tried in vain to lower his coffin into where was supposed to have been his final resting place.

Devon Edwards Jr, the son of the deceased, said the family was “heartbroken” over what transpired and is laying the blame squarely on the authorities.

“My (father’s body) came home from overseas. The size of the casket is apparently too large for the hole. We weren’t told at the parish council … nobody asked what size or whatsoever… So once we got here he could not fit,” Edwards Jr told OBSERVER ONLINE at the graveside.

He alleged that the matter was made worse when funeral workers attempted to instead provide the family with another plot that had not been prepared.

“First and foremost they are trying to give us another hole that is not even prepared. They just want us to put him in there like he is an animal, which he is absolutely not… My father is a very orderly person, he was a police officer for thirty something years,” Edwards Jr said.

A Thetford Park Cemetery representative distanced the facility from the mix-up.

“We just followed orders, but when the casket came it was an oversized casket, so it can’t go into the singular hole,” said the woman who refused to state her name.

“It says we are supposed to prepare a single, and when you say ‘single’, that means single regular, if it’s a single large it would say that,” she continued. “An oversized casket cannot go into regular singles, that’s why we always ask the family to ask the funeral directors to give them instructions re the size of the casket.”

The family planned to reschedule Edwards Sr’s burial for Thursday morning.

“We are going to go to the parish council, get a new hole, pay the extra fee and they are going to dig him a different hole and we are going to reschedule for Thursday morning at 9am,” Edwards Jr said.

He said the family should be compensated for the mishap.

“There is a lot of oversight, in the US this would never happen. People need to do their jobs. Everybody is too lackadaisical, the system is broken in every manner in this country,” he said.

OBSERVER ONLINE’s videographer Llewellyn Wynter was at the scene. Watch the video.