‘I was furious’: Mother says she couldn’t hold funeral for her son as Walz violated his own COVID orders

By Hayley Feland

A family says they were “forbidden” from holding a funeral for their son in 2020 before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attended a 500-person memorial for George Floyd.

“At the time, I was furious. I was already really upset about the fact that we were not able to have a funeral,” Jennifer Janisch, the mother of Tony Janisch, told Alpha News. “Very quickly you realize how important a tradition that is when you can’t have one [a funeral].”

Janisch’s son, 16-year-old Tony Janisch, died in March 2020. Initially, 28-year-old Daniel Rodman was charged with criminal vehicular homicide while operating a vehicle under the influence and was accused of striking Janisch while he was riding his bike. However, the charges were later dismissed and Jennifer Janisch says the family was “not ever given any clear answers” as to why. Court records indicate that Rodman has since been convicted of a felony DWI in a different incident.

“The morning my son died, Gov. Walz had come on the TV and we found out that the schools and salons were going to be shut down,” Jansich said.

She said that when she saw Walz attending Floyd’s memorial service, she was angry. “The front page of a section in the Star Tribune had the photo that I have on my Facebook post of Walz in this crowd,” Janisch said. “I was furious and emailed his office a letter and let them know how terrible that was.”

“The arrogance to do that in public and let it be photographed was mind blowing to me,” she added.

She explained that her family members were the only ones able to be present at the funeral home, but they even had to do that immediately due to impending additional restrictions that were going to be put in place the following Friday.

“His girlfriend, his friends, didn’t have the chance to say goodbye,” Janisch said.

She told Alpha News that months after her son’s death they were able to hold a memorial service. “When the churches were allowed to reopen in June with the 250-person limit, we held a memorial on July 18, 2020,” she said. “We had to get RSVPs so we didn’t go over capacity, but we couldn’t have a luncheon at the church, so we ended up having it in our backyard, almost grad-party style.”

The memorial service for George Floyd was held in June of 2020, when many of Walz’s COVID emergency orders were in effect, including one that governed the use of churches, singing, religious gatherings, and funerals.

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