Posted June 25, 2017 13:44:27

Photo: Eleven days after he thought he buried him, Frank Kerrigan spoke to his son on the phone. (AP: Andrew Foulk)

Eleven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J Kerrigan got a call from a friend — "Your son is alive."

"Bill [Shinker] put my son on the phone," Mr Kerrigan said. "He said 'hi Dad'."

Orange County coroner's officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register said.

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 M Kerrigan, 57, who has a mental illness and had been living on the street.

Photo: The Kerrigan family was told Frank had been identified by fingerprints. (AP: Andrew Foulk)

When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — identification had been made through fingerprints.

"When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Mr Kerrigan said.

"If he wasn't identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat."

Frank's sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, 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 $US20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state. Frank's brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.

"We thought we were burying our brother," Ms Meikle said.

"Someone else had a beautiful send-off. It's horrific."

The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 45 metres from where Mr Kerrigan's wife is buried.

Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Mr 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 Mr Shinker. Mr Kerrigan's son was standing on the patio.

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

Doug Easton, an attorney hired by Mr Kerrigan, said coroner's officials apparently were not able to match the corpse's fingerprints through a law enforcement database and instead identified the body using an old driver's license photo.

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

Photo: The Kerrigan family "lived through their worst fear". (AP: Andrew Foulk)

Easton said the coroner's office provided the Kerrigan family with a name of that person, but the identification has not been independently confirmed.

The attorney said the family plans to sue, alleging authorities did not properly try to identify the body as Mr Kerrigan's son because he is homeless.

Sheriff's lieutenant Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the coroner's office, said the department extends regrets to the Kerrigan family "for any emotional stress caused as a result of this unfortunate incident".

In a statement, she said the Orange County Sheriff's Department is conducting an internal investigation into the mix-up and that all identification policies and procedures will be reviewed to ensure no misidentifications occur in the future.

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

Ms Meikle said her brother chose to return to living on the street and does not understand how hard the mistake was on his family.

"We lived through our worst fear," she said. "He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don't go away."

AP

Topics: death, community-and-society, united-states