Alleged dog remains from fire turn out to be human

In what must be one of the worst cases of “mistaken identity”, the remains handed over to relatives of a missing couple, at first announced to be of their two dogs, turned out to be human. The remains have not been positively identified as those of the couple but police assured them they are working on confirming the identity of the bodies.

A fire struck a house last June 2 in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture and destroyed the house of the missing couple completely. A body part discovered inside the house, a piece of flesh from the pelvic region, is said to be that of an unidentified individual. So, the police assumed that the couple are still missing based on that recovered body part. They recovered another small part of flesh in the fire, and since the couple had two small dogs, they concluded that it was one of the dogs and handed over the remains to the couple’s relatives on June 4.

But officials from the facility where the remains were stored became suspicious that the remains were in fact from a human being. They contacted the relatives and informed them of their suspicion. They then asked the prefectural police to perform a legal autopsy, which confirmed the error made by the police officers at the scene. Tetsuya Harada, first investigation division chief from the Ibaraki Prefectural Police department, apologized to the family and blamed the error on “sloppy confirmation procedures”. They are now working double time to confirm the identities of the two sets of remains recovered from the fire.

Friday 7 June 2013

http://japandailypress.com/alleged-dog-remains-from-fire-turn-out-to-be-human-0730155