DEAD WRONG!
Dude alive & well after boneheads tell kin he’s gone & even send ashes
AN OREGON family received a death certificate for their 23-yearold loved one — along with an urn full of ashes — only to discover the dude was alive three months later!
Multnomah County officials initially informed Tyler Chase’s relatives he’d suffered a fatal drug overdose and say the family declined to view the body at a funeral home before the remains were cremated.
But the dead wrong case of mistaken identity ultimately came to light!
Chase had been living in a recovery center for several months after struggling on the streets with substance abuse and didn’t have contact with his family for years.
But when the recovering addict visited a Department of Human Services office in Portland to reinstate his canceled food assistance benefits, he learned the government had declared him dead!
A county spokesperson reveals the confusion was caused by a lifeless man carrying Chase’s wallet, which contained his photo-free temporary driver’s license!
“So they find a paper ID of me that’s smudged and everything, and they were like ‘that’s Tyler John Chase,’ so they put him down as me,” he explains. “And then they notified the family by protocol.”
When officials realized the grave mix-up, they tracked down Chase, put him in touch with his shocked relations — and broke the bad news to the family of the deceased, whose name was not released.
Latasha Rosales admits she “lost it” when she learned her cousin was alive!
“It is so hard to believe how something like this could even happen. It just makes no sense to me,” says Rosales.
Since then, the county has promised a policy change, with a rep explaining, “Going forward, all individuals who are found with a temporary state-issued identification must also have fingerprints submitted for positive identification, to ensure that this will never happen again.”