Orange County Man To Sue After Coroner Misidentifies Dead Body As Man's Son Who Is Alive

California native Frank J. Kerrigan, 82, is going to bring charges against Orange County after a coroner wrongly identified a dead body as his homeless son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, leading his to hold a funeral and bury a stranger's body instead.

The father was notified that his son was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley, Orange County, on May 6, 2017. When he wished to identify the body, he was told by the coroner’s office that he did not need to do so because they had already matched his son’s fingerprints to the state register.

“When somebody tells me my son is dead when they have fingerprints, I believe them,” Kerrigan said, OC Register reported. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat.”

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Kerrigan’s attorney, Doug Easton, told local newspaper My News LA that officials lied about the fingerprint match and instead matched the appearance of the dead body to an old photograph of the younger Kerrigan from his driver’s license.

An estimated $20,000 funeral was held May 12 at Holy Family Catholic Cathedral in Orange County where the Kerrigan family buried a stranger, thinking it was the body of their mentally ill and homeless relative. At the funeral, Kerrigan, overwhelmed with grief, believed it was his son inside the casket when he took a peek inside.

“I took a little look and touched his hair,” Kerrigan recalled, according to OC Register. “I didn’t know what my dead son was going to look like.”

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However, a friend of the presumably deceased man called Kerrigan on May 23 to tell him that his son was alive and well. Kerrigan junior even got on the phone and talked with his grief-stricken father.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has launched an investigation into the coroner’s botched identification after publicly admitting the error in a press release Saturday and vowing to review their identification procedures in order to prevent future mistakes like this one.

“The department extends regrets to the family of Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, for any emotional stress caused as a result of this unfortunate incident,” the sheriff’s department said in the statement.

No details have been released regarding the name or other information about the man who was buried in the place of the younger Kerrigan.

“Keep in mind that an internal investigation is going on that will look into everything that was done,” Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret said. “We cannot discuss the specifics of the case due to pending litigation.”

The California father will be filing a claim against Orange County next week which will be followed by a lawsuit that alleges the younger Kerrigan’s civil rights were violated because the coroner’s office failed to make adequate efforts to correctly identify the body.

Kerrigan’s daughter, Carole Meikle, told OC Register: “We thought we were burying our brother. Someone else had a beautiful send-off. It’s horrific.”