Angry parents seek autopsies of ferry victims
A — ome parents of the mostly teenage victims of o th orea s ferry disaster are p shing for a topsies that might show their children were alive inside the s bmerged vessel and only died beca se the emergency response was so slow.
ore than a week after the cap si ed and sank with people on board most of them high school st dents there is still widespread anger among the vic tims families over the pace of the initial resc e effort.
It took divers working in diffic lt dangero s conditions more than two days to access the s nken ferry and two more days to retrieve the first bodies.
any relatives believe some of the victims may have s rvived for several days in trapped air pockets b t per ished in the cold water after no resc e came.
As a res lt some have asked for a top sies to be performed to see if it wo ld be possible to determine the precise ca se and time of death.
“ e have received a n mber of in iries abo t a topsies said a member of the forensic team on indo island working on identifying the bodies recovered from the disaster site.
“It seems they want some confirmation of the e act ca se of death b t it s only a minority that is asking he said.
An official responsible for legal and medical iss es at the emergency sit ation desk on indo said there was nothing to prevent families having an a topsy car ried o t.
“ t to my knowledge nobody has so far act ally bro ght a body to the ational orensic ervice to have this done the official said.
Trapped survivors?
he belief that some passengers might have s rvived the initial capsi e was very strong in the days immediately after the sank f elled in part by fake post ings on social network sites that claimed to be te t messages from trapped passen gers begging to be resc ed.
elatives have also been distressed by reports that many of the recovered bodies had broken fingers — pointing to frantic efforts to escape the vessel as it listed and sank.
f the people on board were st dents from anwon igh chool in Ansan city st so th of eo l.