Simon Hunter
THE family of a car crash victim in Madrid has been left furious and in shock after they discovered they did not have the body of their loved one at his funeral, but instead another of the men who died in the tragic accident.
Three people were killed on the A-6 motorway in Madrid on Sunday, when a car that was travelling in the wrong direction smashed head on into another vehicle.
A judge in the Madrid city of Majadahonda is now investigating how the bodies of police officer Alberto, 44, and his companion in the vehicle, Juan Carlos, 41, got mixed up.
According to Spanish daily El Mundo, it was a sister of Juan Carlos, Sandra, who discovered what had happened after she opened his coffin at the funeral home ahead of his cremation and realised the body inside was not that of her brother.
The authorities are working on the theory that the bodies were mixed up at the scene of the accident, given its violent nature.
The crash happened when Alberto and Juan Carlos – who had met through car ride-sharing app Blablacar – smashed into a vehicle that was being driven the wrong way along the motorway.
The pair died in the crash, as did the driver of the car coming the wrong way, a 26-year-old also named Juan Carlos.
His passenger, his brother, was left in a coma.
A motorcyclist, meanwhile, was also seriously injured after he collided with the oncoming vehicle just before the deadly crash.
The state of the bodies was such that the victims’ families were advised not to view them before they were cremated.
But Juan Carlos’s sister insisted on opening the coffin to say goodbye.
On seeing the body she immediately realised it did not belong to her brother, as the tattoos on his arms were missing.
The family immediately got in touch with the other family, who were in a funeral home in Avila province ahead of their relative’s own cremation.
They also confirmed that their coffin did not contain their relative, Alberto.
On Monday evening, a court ordered the bodies to be taken back to the Legal Medicine Institute, where the autopsies had been carried out on Monday.
The correct bodies were then returned to the families, and the proper funerals were held on Wednesday.
Sandra told El Mundo that the family is furious over the mix-up, and that no one had apologised to them.
“No one has spoken to us,” she said. “We are not ruling out taking legal action over what happened and demand that someone assumes responsibility.”
