A family has been left in serious shock after police officers stormed a funeral home to try to use their dead father's finger to unlock his phone.
Linus Phillip before his death
A family have been left outraged after cops went to a funeral home to try and unlock a mobile phone with their dead relative's finger.
Linus Phillip was killed by a police officer last month after authorities say he tried to drive away before he could be searched.
At the funeral home in Largo, Florida, two detectives held the man's hands up to the phone's fingerprint sensor but could not unlock it.
The thirty-year-old’s fiancee Victoria Armstrong says she felt violated and disrespected.
Legal experts mostly agree that what the detectives did was legal, but they question whether it was appropriate.
Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, tells the Tampa Bay Times that dead people can't assert their Fourth Amendment protections because you can't own property when you're dead.
But those rights could apply to whoever inherits the property.
After the family saw cops try to use Phillip's fingerprint after his death, their attorney filed a complaint against the detective.
They said they are also considering a lawsuit against the City of Largo for unwarranted search and seizure, and obtaining illegal access to the body after it had left city custody.
Phillip's family said he was pulled over at a petrol station because the tinted windows on his rental car were too dark, according to cops.
The cops claimed they could smell marijuana, so they tried to detain him.
But they said he tried to drive away, causing police to fire four shots through the passenger window, killing him.
After the fatal shooting police told the family that WaWa’s security cameras caught video of the incident but, they later said that all the cameras had an obscured view, and as a result, only had video of the police rendering CPR on Linus.
Police later told the family’s attorney, John Trevena, that no video existed.
Phillip's mother Martha Hicks told ABC: “They killed him after his 30th birthday. Oh god he turned 30 on March 11.
“It's too much, too much. We just want to know what happened.”
Victoria said: “My son is no longer going to go have a father, or to make his dad proud.
“He's not here anymore because of this and the police are slandering his name like some awful person.
“We are fighting to find out what happened.”
A GoFundMe page was set up for the father, titled Justice for Linus Phillip, with a goal is to raise £36,000.