Times Colonist

Dad buries wrong man after coroner’s mistake

-

SANTA ANA, California — 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.

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 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, Carole Meikle, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads.

“It was a very difficult situation for me to stand at a pretty disturbing scene. There was blood and dirty blankets,” she said.

On May 12, the family held a $20,000 US funeral Frank’s brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.

“We thought we were burying our brother,” Meikle said. “Someone else had a beautiful sendoff. It’s horrific.”

The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 50 metres from where Kerrigan’s wife is buried.

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.

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.

Doug Easton, an attorney hired by Kerrigan, said coroner’s officials apparently weren’t able to match the corpse’s fingerprin­ts through a law-enforcemen­t database and instead identified Kerrigan by using an old driver’s licence photo.

When the family told authoritie­s he was alive, they tried the fingerprin­ts again and on June 1, learned they matched someone else’s, Meikle said.

The attorney said the family plans to sue, alleging authoritie­s didn’t properly try to identify the body because Kerrigan’s son is homeless.

Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, said the department extends regrets to the Kerrigan family “for any emotional stress caused.”

Lagaret said in a statement Saturday that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is conducting an internal investigat­ion and all identifica­tion policies and procedures will be reviewed.

The mistaken death identifica­tion led the U.S. government to stop disability payments for her brother, Meikle said. The family is working to restore them.

Meikle said her brother chose to return to living on the street.

 ?? ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA AP ?? Frank Kerrigan holds a photo of his three children, John, Carole and Frank, near Wildomar, California. Kerrigan was told Frank had died.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA AP Frank Kerrigan holds a photo of his three children, John, Carole and Frank, near Wildomar, California. Kerrigan was told Frank had died.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada