Two families fight over corpse

Two families almost came to blows at the Lekan Ogunsola Memorial Morgue of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos on Monday as both relations lay claim to the same body.

The dispute over the body began when the family members of the late Mr. Jones Ifekanwa, who died in the Dana plane crash, were told that another family, who reportedly refused to disclose their name, had also lay claim to the same body as their own.

The Chief Medical Examiner, Prof. John Obafunwa, invited the Ifekanwa family to identify their late brother’s corpse but found it difficult to effectively re-identify the body as they did last week.

Another family, after going in to identify their relation’s corpse, also picked the same body as the lfekanwa family had picked.

For further clarification, Obafunwa denied both families access to the body until the DNA testing results would be out in the next four weeks.

Our correspondent gathered from the elder sister to the late Ifekanwa, Mrs. Jennifer Enanana, that the mix-up arose from the decomposing state of the body.

A fight almost ensued between members of the families, but for the intervention of security men at the mortuary.

Enanana said, “My brother was identified at the crash site. He wasn’t burnt. He had his identity card with him and some other documents in his pockets; with that, they identified him.

“So this morning, they took us in and they wrapped him up as if it was a gift pack, showing just his face not his ears, not his head. Can you imagine? And we were telling them that this is our brother whom we have identified. He has a mark on his lips and on his forehead; it is just a unique feature of him and all that.

“Could you believe that another family went inside and identified the same Jones’s body? A body that has been identified by them and confirmed by us twice!That means they did not store the bodies properly; that means there is something fishy going on.”

Culled from Punch news.