# Fatal accident mis-identification. AKA my county officials are idiots. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 1, 2006, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997 "2006-06-01T10:59:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Stillwell\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@Stillwell\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stillwell_Angel)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/21 "2006-06-02T01:22:33Z")
Originally Posted by **Stillwell Angel** The Coroner himself has issued a statement admitting they didn’t go far enough in trying to ID these girls. > [@Garfield226](#): > > That’s pretty interesting, since in the story your OP linked to, he says Quote: > Coroner Ron Mowery described an accident scene strewn with purses and wallets and said acquaintances of the students had identified the survivor as VanRyn. No scientific testing was conducted to verify the identifications. > > “I can’t stress enough that we did everything we knew to do under those circumstances, and trusted the same processes and the same policies that we always do,” Mowery said. Sorry, I don’t have a link, but I watched the televised statement in which he said: They followed protocol, but in this situation that wasn’t enough. He also stated that as soon as they realized the victim in the hospital was going to live that they should have sent a representative to the hospital to talk with her family. To me, both those statements are saying they didn’t do all they could have. It may have meant waiting to notify families, but a simple dental check would not have taken that long, and avoided alot of heartache on both sides. Ron Mowery has been a prominent player around here since I was a kid. He was our sheriff and later our Mayor. He isn’t a bad guy, but I’ll never understand how people with no medical training whatsoever end up being coroners. ---
**Author:** ![Velma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/85e7bf/32.png) [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/22 "2006-06-02T03:04:30Z")
I am watching the latest news report right now. It says that Laura’s roommate suspected something was wrong - the survivor wrote that her name was Whitney on a piece of paper when questioned by a therapist. The Kent County medical examiner said more should have been done in this case to identify the bodies. They body of Laura is going to be exhumed. The Today show is going to do a segment on this tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/23 "2006-06-02T03:26:36Z")
Anyone else a little creeped out by the links in that article? “Watch how the crying coroner expressed his regret.” I’m aware that, to a large extent, modern corporate media relies on the voyeuristic tendencies of the public to keep in business, but can we keep it just a tad more sub rosa than that? ---
**Author:** ![cerberus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cerberus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cerberus)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/24 "2006-06-02T03:28:42Z")
Every protocol will have a certain failure rate. The extreme rarity of this type of event, as suggested by the nature of the media coverage and public reaction to said coverage, suggests that such events are rare, and that the protocol is reliable (but not perfect). ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/25 "2006-06-02T06:07:11Z")
> [@cerberus](#): > > Every protocol will have a certain failure rate. The extreme rarity of this type of event, as suggested by the nature of the media coverage and public reaction to said coverage, suggests that such events are rare, and that the protocol is reliable (but not perfect). I was going to say something similar. This is the result of a huge number of coincidences, similarities, and minor errors that added up to a newsworthy result – it’s not like there are dozens of these cases being reported. ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/26 "2006-06-02T07:55:07Z")
Looking at [The family’s blog](http://lauravanryn.blogspot.com/)…I must say, considering how horrifying and crushing this must be for them, the blog entry about it is quite calm and composed. If something like this happened to me (God forbid), I would probably be incoherent with grief and rage. I commend them for being able to hold it together in the face of something this terrible. This reminds me of that horrible misunderstanding about those West Va. miners being alive when they were really dead. ☹ It was hard for me to fathom what a horrible feeling ti must have been to discover the terrible truth after having your hopes raised like that. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997/27 "2006-07-24T14:21:09Z")
Life goes on. Renewal, & Hope blossoms. The survivor walks again. [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14010281/](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14010281/) > [@](#): > > “We were in tears when she stood up on both legs, took three steps forward and looked at us with a huge smile and said ’Lets take the stairs,”’ her father, Newell Cerak, wrote Friday in the blog, which details her medical progress. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatal-accident-mis-identification-aka-my-county-officials-are-idiots/358997.md?page=1)