Coroner explains what happened in tragic Humboldt identity mix-up

A coroner involved in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash says it wasn’t until an injured player woke up in hospital and said he wasn’t who everyone thought he was that officials realized there had been a big mistake in identifying the dead.

Since the crash, Parker Tobin’s loved ones from Alberta had been at the bedside of the player they thought was Parker, an 18year-old goalie. He had serious facial injuries, but they believed he was their boy.

It turned out it was actually teammate Xavier Labelle in the bed, a player already listed as among the many dead and being remembered at a public vigil that night.

“Xavier woke up and said, ‘I’m not Parker Tobin,”’ Wayne Nogier, a community coroner in Melfort, Sask., recalled this week.

It was a mix-up that compounded an already unthinkable tragedy.

Nogier, a former paramedic who also sits on the board of the Saskatchewan Hockey Association and has worked as a referee, was the first of two coroners to arrive at the crash site north of Tisdale, Sask., on April 6. He is listed as the coroner on the case file.

The junior hockey team had been on its way to a Friday night playoff game when its bus and a truck collided at a rural intersection.

Fourteen bodies from the wreckage were taken to a Saskatoon funeral home that acted as the morgue over that weekend, said Nogier. Fifteen injured people were taken to hospital and two died in the days that followed.

Photos and information from the team were initially used by staff from the coroner’s office and funeral home to match the bodies with names, said Nogier. It was a difficult task. The players had all dyed their hair blond and were growing playoff beards. Most didn’t have their wallets on them.

An assistant coach helped identify the bodies before the families were brought in, said Nogier. All were able to confirm the matches, except in Labelle’s case.

“The family looked and they’re saying, ‘Oh geez. You know. Maybe. Probably. Umm, I don’t know. Nobody else is unaccounted for. Maybe.”’

Nogier said Labelle, an 18-year-old defenceman from Saskatoon, had previously worn braces, so a request was made for his dental records. His orthodontist was planning to head to his office that Sunday night to pull Labelle’s films.

But before he could send them to the coroner’s office, the player who was actually Labelle woke up.

By then, his name was listed among the dead on a news release.