It’s been nearly a week, and Nancy Worrell still is waiting to see the body of her 21-year-old son, who was shot by police near the family’s home in southeast Baltimore.

The day after the early Tuesday shooting, Bryant Worrell’s sister Lynn Blanks, 28, said she went to identify the body at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, but was told the body wasn’t there.

When she went back to the morgue Thursday with Nancy Worrell, they were told they couldn’t see the body, Blanks said.

“They’re saying he was already identified by police and we can’t see him because they’re investigating,” Blanks said. “They don’t want anybody seeing him because they’re covering up something. This makes you hate police, it makes you not want to trust them.”

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City police say they shot Bryant Worrell after the developmentally disabled man refused to drop a gun. But family members say they don’t believe Worrell was armed.

Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford said homicide detectives are investigating the shooting, but it’s the Medical Examiner’s Office that decides whether the family can see Worrell’s body.

State Medical Examiner David Fowler did not return repeated phone calls.

 Nancy Worrell had called police when five men broke into her home and began beating her son. When he was shot and collapsed behind a house on the 3100 block of East Lombard Street, she and her husband were not allowed to see their son, she said.

“I tried to go back there and see my son, and they told me to ‘get the f--- back in the house,’ ” she said.

Worrell’s girlfriend, Sharda Fenwick, 17, is pregnant. He also has a 4-year-old daughter with another woman, family members said.

Court records show Worrell was on probation for a 2005 theft and had convictions for drug possession in 2007 and burglary in 2006. He was charged but not convicted of armed robbery in 2005.

The family is asking for donations to the Bryant Worrell Memorial Fund for a funeral service. Donations can be made at any Provident Bank.

Examiner Staff Writer Luke Broadwater contributed to this report.

cpeirce@baltimoreexaminer.com