The FedEx Twitter account sent an absurd response to a report about how the company lost a man’s body while it was being transported to determine his cause of death.
On Thursday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that it has been three years since the shipping company lost 32-year-old Jeffrey Merriweather’s remains.
Merriweather’s body was sent by Georgia’s Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office to a St. Louis lab for additional testing through FedEx. According to the report, the office was trying to collect information about how he had “became a near-complete skeleton less than two weeks after he was last seen alive during a shooting in East Point.”
With the loss of his body, the cause of his death, or how he ended up in such a state, was never determined — leaving his grieving family without answers.
“It’s a nightmare you can’t wake up from,” Kathleen Merriweather, his mother, told the paper.
When the news organization tweeted out the link to the article, they got a surprising response from FedEx.
“I am truly sorry you went through this experience. Please send us a direct message so I can further assist you. – Gaby,” the tweet said.
The tweet has since been deleted.
However, responses to the article also began being replied to by FedEx’s seemingly automated account.
In response to situation on social media, a spokesperson for FedEx told Indy 100, “We deleted several company responses to this tweet that were made in error. We apologize for the mistake and are committed to preventing this type of issue from occurring again.”
The Journal Constitution reports, “the bizarre episode also may have violated the law. Human bodies are traditionally transported across state lines by airline. FedEx said using its services to send human remains is prohibited, a fact that’s stated in its user manual. The U.S. Postal Service is the only mailing service legally qualified to carry human remains across the country and then only under strict guidelines.”
Merriweather remains missing.