Corpse falls from mortuary van: Police move body to the side of the street

BBC News On-Line | Wednesday, 05 Feb., 2003 | staff writer

[yankeedame]

Wednesday, 5 February, 2003, 07:57 GMT

Corpse falls from mortuary van

Police moved the body to the side of the street

A woman's body has been found lying in a busy street in Chatham, Kent, after it fell from a mortuary van. Motorists called the police after spotting the corpse, wrapped in a black body bag, in the middle of the road on Tuesday.

The body was moved to the side of the street and covered by police while they tried to trace the van, which was found to belong to the local Co-Operative Funeral Service.

It is thought the driver was unaware the corpse had slipped from the vehicle at the time but eventually returned to the scene.

Regrettable

A Kent Police spokesman said: "Once they were tracked down they came back to take the body away".

The spokesman added that the driver had been reported for carrying an insecure load.

The Co-Operative Funeral Service in Chatham said the body was being transferred from a hospital to its premises when the incident happened.

A spokesman said: "We confirm that in a highly regrettable and distressing incident yesterday a stretcher carrying a body fell from the back of one of our funeral removal vehicles.

"Everyone concerned is extremely shocked and upset by the incident and we have launched an immediate inquiry into how it happened.

"We have contacted the family of the deceased to inform them of the incident.

"The police are also investigating and we are co-operating fully with their inquiries."

[yankeedame]

Posted this just in case, you know, just in case you ran out of things to talk about today. No! No! No thanks needed. The expression on your face was thanks enough.

[robertpaulsen]

Bring out your dead! (clang)

[anobjectivist]

Were police following charlie sheen in a chase?

[DainBramage]

Will there be a stiff fine?

[shiva]

This is a 'grave' situation.

[Physicist]

Not much of a news story. Police are forever taking women off of the street.

[DainBramage]

I Wonder if his name was Skip.

[martin_fierro]

Heh - you beat me to it.

[VRWCmember]

(click on the picture for sound)

[ricpic]

Bump bump bump.

[Savage Beast]

It's a shame it didn't happen in the U.S. The family could sue for zillions for "pain and suffering", "horrorification", bad dreams, headache, inadequate sex life--you name it. So could the onlookers!

[Clintons Are White Trash]

Something similar happened - my nephew is an EMT and told us that once an ambulance was transporting a body to a local mortuary. The ambulance driver who had been feeling ill suffered a heart attack and crashed the ambulance - causing the deceased to leave the back of the ambulance on the gurney and land in the street.

Before they figured out what was happening, bystanders and police had been doing CPR on the deceased for 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the ambulance driver didn't survive his heart attack either.

I don't think the family of the deceased ever found out about the incident....

[Kenny Bunk]

This story must be a hoax.

Nothing this interesting or exciting ever happens in Kent generally, and in Chatham in particular. Very hard to tell if the residents are alive or deceased, so the subject of this story may well have been a live resident simply going about an errand in the village, when these busybodies intervened.

[mrustow]

Did the constables ticket the trespasser for wrong side of the street parking?

[Kenny Bunk]

Bump