County coroner’s error leads to California family burying the wrong man
"A woman at the coroner's office said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints. Another family member who talked to the coroner's office said a woman told her Kerrigan also had been found with his identification, according to the lawsuit. Last May, Kerrigan's family buried a man. Eleven days later, Kerrigan turned up at a family friend's house. The friend called Kerrigan's family to tell them he was alive. The man the Kerrigan family had buried turned out to be a Kansas native named John Dickens, who had to be exhumed before he was cremated and sent to his mother in Kansas."