U-Haul horror funeral home boss loses his license after distressing picture emerges showing bodies piled up behind screen, three weeks before up to 100 corpses were discovered in trucks outside

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A sickening photograph taken inside the Brooklyn funeral home where bodies were found piled up in U-Hauls earlier this week shows bodies lying discarded inside, inches away from a family holding a funeral, three weeks ago.

The photograph was taken by Zeqway Clarke on April 9 while he and his family were at the Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home to mourn his grandmother. 

He was sitting in the back of the visitation room when he notice a gap in a fabric screen that had been put up behind his grandmother's coffin and saw a human foot. 

He told The Daily Beast that he approached the coffin then stuck his hand up over the screen to take a photograph on his phone but did not look beyond it in person. 

He was horrified to see there were at least eight naked corpses, piled next to each other with sheets barely covering their faces or bodies, in the image. 

The image was taken 22 days before police were called to the funeral home amid complaints about a foul smell. 

They found more than 100 decomposing bodies piled up in U-Haul vans outside the home. 

No charges have been filed but the state government has revoked Cleckley's license. 

The photograph was taken by Zeqway Clarke on April 9 while he and his family were at the Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home to mourn his grandmother

A photograph taken from behind the screen, next to Clarke's grandmother's casket, shows the gap in the partition which alerted him to the grim scene on the other side 

U-Haul has now banned the home from renting any of its trucks, according to TMZ. 

Cleckley said on Thursday that he had been 'jammed up' by the coronavirus crisis but offered no words of comfort to the families of the people who were left in the trucks or inside the home. 

'I ran out of space. Bodies are coming out of our ears,' he said, adding that he had taken on bodies from other homes nearby.

'We’re all trying to help our clients but we’re jammed up,' he told The New York Times.

He has not commented on the photo taken on April 9. 

Clarke said that he considered reporting it to the police but that he was deterred with the chaos of the pandemic. 

'There was so much going on with the pandemic, social distancing, I figured it hell or high water to get in contact with somebody,' he said. 

His photographs match one that was publicly shared on the funeral home's own Facebook page. 

It appears that on April 9, they divided the large room they would normally use for services. 

Andrew Cleckley, the funeral home director, was seen speaking to relatives of people who had recently died, outside the home on Thursday

Cleckley pictured outside the home on Thursday. He said the business was 'jammed up' and had bodies 'coming out our ears'

Relatives of people whose deaths were handled by the funeral home were seen there outside on Thursday

Workers outside the home on Thursday were seen moving caskets inside 

Cleckey's funeral home in Flatlands on Friday. The state has now withdrawn his license 

On the day he visited, Clarke's family was in one half of the room with his grandmother's casket, and the corpses were in the other.  

On Wednesday, dozens of photographs emerged from the funeral home showing bodies being extracted from U-Haul trucks parked outside.  

There was no answer at the funeral home on Friday. 

No charges have been filed but the Department of Health, which oversees funeral homes, is investigating. 

Authorities found two unrefrigerated U-Haul box trucks being used to store the bodies after police responded to 911 complaints from neighbors who had filmed body bags being dragged into the trucks. 

Police found the bodies in various stages of decomposition; locals said 'you could smell the death'. 

Bosses at U-Haul on Thursday slammed the use of their trucks as 'wrongful, egregious and inhumane'.

Cleckley was seen outside the home again on Friday. He was unhappy about the media presence there 

Employees loaded the corpses into refrigerated trucks on Friday after mass outrage

There were crowds of people outside the funeral home on Friday demanding their loved ones' bodies back

Grieving and angry relatives descended on the funeral home after learning of the horrendous treatment their loved ones had received 

A mourner on Friday outside the funeral home. Sources said there were issues with the embalming process of one man's funeral and irate relatives did not know whether or not to go ahead with it 

People in Hazmat suits transport a deceased body on a stretcher outside the funeral home in Brooklyn following the outrage over the use of the U-Haul trucks

Tamisha Covington, pictured, said she was charged $15,000 for her mother's body to be kept 'in a U-Haul truck for however long' following her death from a heart attack related to COVID 19, aged 60, on April 9

Police found the bodies in the trucks in various stages of decomposition; locals said 'you could smell the death'. Now they are being loaded into refrigerated trucks

A casket covered in a sheet is transported by men wearing hazmat suits outside the funeral home 

They told TMZ: 'Our trucks are designed for household moves. Properly caring for the remains of people’s loved ones requires vehicles suited specifically for that purpose. 

'Our trucks absolutely cannot be rented for this reason.'  

There were as many as 50 corpses being stored in each truck, according to ABC News , as the facility struggled to keep up with the overwhelming surge of bodies due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The owner told city officials that its freezer had stopped working and they were forced to use the trucks as storage while bodies awaited burial or cremation.

One grieving relative said he was told 'the refrigerators were filled and they were going to embalm' his late ex wife.

The man, known only as Paul, said his deceased relative came to the funeral parlor on Friday. He added: 'And now they are saying she was in the refrigerator as soon as they brought her here on Friday, so I don’t know.

'I’m frustrated. This is ridiculous.'

'For weeks already, there have been trucks constantly outside unloading bodies. You could smell the death,' Jay Fredo told New York Daily News. 'Some of them have been dropped. I know it's a pandemic, but this is crazy. It's sick.'

No criminal charges were brought but the home was cited for failing to control the odors.