Posted on 04/20/2022 7:11:40 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Frank Kerrigan received the call no parent wants to receive. His son Frankie had died.
Frankie, who was 57 at the time, suffers from mental illness and was living on the streets, his family said.
Frank Kerrigan was notified by the Orange County Coroner’s Office that a body discovered in Fountain Valley had been positively identified as Frankie through the use of fingerprints.
Devastated by their loss, the Kerrigan family held a funeral and Frankie was buried in a plot next to his mother.
The only problem? It wasn’t Frankie.
Just days after the funeral, Frankie showed up at the home of family friends who had just served as pallbearers at his own funeral.
The family had actually buried another man who has since been identified as John Dickens.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
“This was a systematic failure within the O.C. Coroner’s Office because they did not have any training or procedure for individuals in their office to understand how their fingerprint system worked or even to confirm that a body was found with fingerprints,” said James Desimone, the family’s attorney.
No training seems to be rampant these days. Coming out of our failed educational system, people need even more training and procedures.
That must hurt like the dickens
Oh my! I think I’ve seen that tv drama.
“Just days after the funeral, Frankie showed up at the home of family friends who had just served as pallbearers at his own funeral.”
Raising the Dead
Lazarus.
How To Give Your Elderly Parents a Heart Attack...Lesson #1.
I wonder if he had a life insurance policy?
It has to be hard to do a positive ID on a dead body carrying no identification and probably wearing worn out rags, hasn’t showered in months, and is full of drugs. How does a coroner actually do a proper identification? Are fingerprints accurate enough? Does the coroner have another street person do the identification? How do they find an address or relative? Why weren’t the relatives called to the morgue for a positive ID?
I can see this would be hard to do and how mistakes would happen.
At least the coroner tried instead of burying the body in Potter’s Field.
I’ll bet the family gets a big payday.
“I’m not dead yet!”
Good help is hard to find these days.
Especially in CA, most of it that had half a brain and a modicum of common sense has long since left. /s
Probably tried to recover damages for “emotional distress.” I would make the coroner reimburse the cost of the funeral, and then rejoice that my son was alive.
Wasn’t there a scary story about some parents who wanted their dead son back alive? Monkey paw or something like that?
“The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, 1902.
If I was family, a lawsuit win would be unacceptable as a result without the firing and loss of benefits to all involved.
The growing problem in our society is the failure to SEVERELY punish negligence, even when it isn’t deemed criminal (especially among those on the public dole).
The criminal justice system - an oxymoron in blue states - is another matter altogether.
Quotas are all that matters these days. Union Pacific is totally woke and into quotas for female board members as well as the poc and females on the ground running things. Now they’re getting way behind on fertilizer shipments to the Midwest.
Welcome to third world America.
I think SEVERE PUNISHMENT like you suggest zhould only apply if the wrong person being buried was alive at the time... :)
The guy who was alive ... they didn’t bury him.
The guy they buried was really dead.
At least they got the basics right. That’s a start.
The loving family allowed their precious 57 year-old son with mental illness to live on the streets so long that they could not properly identify the remains and is so devastated that they need $1.5 million as emotional balm.
Nice gig if you can get it.
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