By Gabriela Resto-Montero and Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Staff
MANHATTAN — Health Department officials demanded an autopsy be performed on an NYPD officer whose death certificate said he died from 9/11 related cancer, the New York Post reported.
George Wong, 48, a 20-year veteran of the NYPD, died of gastric cancer last week, which his attending physician said was caused by the toxins he was exposed to during his two weeks cleaning up Ground Zero, the Post reported.
The wording on Wong's death certificate, which cited "cancer from 9/11 toxic exposure" as the cause of death, raised flags with the Health Department, who dispatched officers to collect Wong's body for an autopsy minutes before his wake Monday, the paper reported.
"They totally disrespected our family," Wong's brother, Howard Wong, 40, said to the Post.
"Now my brother can't even rest in peace because of this," Wong told the paper. "I feel horrible, my mother is crying."
Wong's family would not allow the Medical Examiner's office to perform an autopsy, forcing officials to instead conduct an "external examination" before changing the cause of death on his certificate to "pending," the Post reported.
"The medical examiner has to follow the law," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters at an unrelated press conference in the Bronx. "When there is a death that the death certificate says is not of natural causes, the Medical Examiner is required by law to go and to perform whatever they think is appropriate."
Bloomberg said the medical examiner's office was "a bit perplexed because they seemed to be working well with the family and then they read the story."
The city maintains that there is no definitive link between Ground Zero toxins and diseases like cancer, the paper reported.
Wong's family planned another wake, funeral and cremation for Wednesday, according to the Post.
