‘DEAD’ SON CALLS HIS FATHER

ELEVEN days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend.

“Your son is alive,” he said. “Put my son on the phone,” Mr Kerrigan said. “He said ‘Hi Dad’.”

Coroner’s officials in Orange County, California, had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported.

The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a phone store in Fountain Valley, California. Mr Kerrigan, 82, 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.

On May 12, the family held a funeral that drew about 50 people with Frank’s brother, John Kerrigan, giving a eulogy.

Then came the May 23 phone call.

It was unclear how coroner’s officials misidentified the body.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says it’s conducting an internal investigation into the mixup and that all identification policies and procedures would be reviewed to ensure no misidentifications occur in the future.

Picture: AP Frank Kerrigan holds a funeral card of his son Frank, who he thought had died. But the coroner's officer had wrongly identified a body as Mr Kerrigan’s son.