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A New York business owner from Harlem languished in the face of her husband’s death, after he passed due to complications from the coronavirus.
Tami Treadwell, 57, the grieving widow and owner of Harlem Seafood Soul, cried out in anguish as she recounted the panic she felt in having to care for her husband Gregory’s corpse for hours, waiting for medical examiners to retrieve his remains. The city’s medical examiner’s office told Treadwell that she would have to wait three hours or up to three days.
“It’s grossly inhumane. I say shame on you Mayor de Blasio … you got to designate somebody to come get these bodies out of here, people who died at home. People are dying at home at an alarming rate,” she continued. “How dare you make us have to deal with that and to live with the body for days? How dare you, Mayor de Blasio? And you can’t blame that s–t on Trump. You can’t blame that s–t on Cuomo! That’s all you Mayor de Blasio.”
While Treadwell is known in her community as the “seafood queen of Harlem,” she was exposed in a new light during the painfully vulnerable moment. Camera’s caught her in the early morning hours of Saturday, April 18, as she searched for help.
“This is our city and we’re being treated like s-t!” she continued.
“We are still here. His body is still here. We have had to put ice on him, and we don’t know what to do,” Treadwell told The New York Post around noon on April 18.
After calling 20 different funeral homes, a parlor in Englewood, New Jersey, agreed to take her husband’s body around 2 p.m.
Treadwell said her husband first began exhibiting cold like symptoms but still powered through to continue working as a driver for a produce company.
“He had a cold for five days. He came home yesterday with a temperature. We talked to the doctor, and the doctor said don’t go to the hospital. Stay home,” his wife said. “He has been working this whole time delivering things. He didn’t even want to stay home, because they need him so much at work.”
Gregory, 62, leaves behind four children aged 9 to 37.
“This is the worst thing that has ever happened,” she continued, in tears.
The tension in New York City is thick as stories from the epicenter continue to unveil the deep disparities facing undeserved communities in the wake of the coronavirus. If these inadequacies continue to go unaddressed, more victims like the Treadwell’s will be unveiled as the heartbreaking stories of the coronavirus pandemic counter on.
