Funeral planned

Police deliver false death notice to family

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Police in the US state of New York made a terrible mistake on Halloween. Officers had to deliver sad news to the relatives of an accident victim - but as it turned out, they informed the wrong family. 

Sheila Nagengast from Staten Island was devastated when she received the news that her 44-year-old sister Denise had been killed in a traffic accident - but her grief gave way to anger when she found out 18 hours later that it wasn't true. 

Lawyer: "Funeral had already been planned"
"She had to inform the rest of her family, including her children, about what had happened. It even went so far as to plan the funeral and discuss whether or not to do an autopsy - decisions you make when you're talking about the death of a loved one," the family's lawyer, Glen Devora, told NBC, describing what the relatives had to go through. 

Nagengast went on to ask how they had identified their sister. "They said that there was some kind of ID card that they used to identify her," she said, according to the Daily Mail. Another sister finally met Denise - "safe and sound", as Nagengast said.

Here you can see a picture of Sheile Nagengast:

Police confess: "Misidentified"
Instead of Denise, a 37-year-old woman was killed in the accident, as the police admitted on Wednesday. "During the course of our initial investigation, the NYPD misidentified the victim of a fatal automobile accident," it said in a statement. "After further investigation, a correct identification was made and the family was subsequently notified. We apologize for any distress we may have caused."

The police had "not fully explained how the mix-up occurred", Nagengast's lawyer said. Two families had been upset by the mistake, he criticized. He now hopes to find out how the mistake could have happened.

The accident had already occurred on the evening of October 30. An 18-year-old driver had run down a pedestrian. The driver remained at the scene of the accident and was not arrested, according to the police.