Posted on 06/25/2017 9:11:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Eleven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend.
"Your son is alive," he said.
"Bill (Shinker) put my son on the phone," Kerrigan said. "He said 'Hi Dad.' "
Orange County coroner's officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported Friday.
The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley.
Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, said he called the coroner's office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street.
When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints.
"When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Kerrigan said. "If he wasn't identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat."
Frank's sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
More fun from the Smart People State.
I understand the incompetence of the gubmint bureaucrats, but is the family blind or something? Or they didn’t care, but want to cash it in with lawsuits.
Funerals aren’t cheap. I’d favor some reimbursement.
and the Crumbling Spillway State
Jeez l can not imagine what this felt like start to finish and yes financial compensation is appropriate at the very least.
Very sad, messed up situation.
The shock of saying ‘Your dead son, is not dead’, is by itself enough to give many elderly parents a heart attack.
It’s possible that the mistaken corpse looked very similar to the man in question.
Perhaps this act of ‘professional presumption’ is more common than most of the general public would like to think, especially when dealing with homeless people, or barely indentified, unclaimed cadavers.
The tragedy is compounded, because although the man’s father grieved his son, whom he considered ‘dead’, the parent was able to think ‘Finally, I can know with certainty that my son is at peace, and not suffering alone in some dark corner.”
Now the wondering and the worrying starts anew.
Apparently the son lived on the streets for decades....
“Apparently the son lived on the streets for decades....”
That clears up a lot of questions I had.
“Apparently the son lived on the streets for decades....”
I am having trouble understanding why the grieving family didn’t even look at their loved son one last time. Just one peek by ANYONE would have cleared up this mess.
Pics are electronic these days.
He did. But having not seen his son in decades, he thought he was looking at the body of his dead son...
Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced he was looking at his son for the last time.
"I didn't know what my dead son was going to look like," he said.
“We lived through our worst fear.” Then came the May 23 phone call from Shinker. Kerrigan's son was standing on the patio.
It was unclear how coroner's officials misidentified the body. <
The father did looked at his son but he’s in his eighties and he hasn’t seen his son in perhaps decades and were told the fingerprint matched that of his son. He probably convinced himself that was his son. Strangest circumstances though
The family spend at least $20K on either a funeral or a memorial service. The (now homeless again by choice) son looks just like his father.
Because otherwise, I'd imagine there's going to be a line from the father's door around the block of lawyers looking for a very easy payday.
Actually LOOK at the guys with the cardboard sign, next time. A two foot white beard, white hair down to the middle of the back, ragged tee shirt, baggy, filthy jeans, run over sneakers, toothless, wrinkled, scrawny, burned to the color of an old saddle... Add to that, how many days the body was behind the store, in the Kali sun. Did the Undertaker clean the body? When was the last time they even saw him, after a bath?
Kali bums tend to adopt a "look". After a couple years, you couldn't pick your twin brother out.
It's not the years, it's the milage.
I wounder how much they paid for the casket? They could have ordered a nice one from Amazon under $1000 or less
Yes it is.
If the state gave Michael Brown’s family $1.5 MILLION because their “gentle giant” was trying to kill a cop with his own gun, I’d think the coroner should cough up $20k to cover funeral expenses at the least. Pain and suffering will be a minimum of $100k
How do we know what the son looks like? The article did not show him except for his 80 year old father holding a picture of his son when he was in his 20s or 30s.
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