Identifying victims after an attack

[Lucked]

There are more stories coming through about the frustration of families with missing relatives some of whom know they were caught up in the terror attacks who cannot confirm if they are amongst he dead. The Spanish foreign minister has also criticised the British authorities.

There is a quote in the DM which I won't link to which says

^Formal identification has to be done to a certain evidence standard and there are few types of formal evidence that are acceptable to a coroner.

'That process of identification will be happening throughout the course of this afternoon and into tomorrow.

'But that does not mean we have not identified the victims.'^

So they are admitting they know but families are phoning phones and checking hospitals and desperately holding out hope. I understand that in some incidents identification is very very difficult due to the injuries but the delay in these cases appears to be awaiting DNA and dental records. I don't think families and the coroners need the same standard; the police say they know.

Also when that formal identification has been completed there appears to be a further delay, the McMullen family were informed they could not told until after the report had gone to the coroner but if the standard is so high why wait any longer than the test result?

This seems so cruel but I think I will be in the minority on this.

This does seem cruel. We were wondering why it was taking so long - can't imagine how the families feel. Understand from the news tonight that there's a possibility that there is a body in the river. Awful.

Oh I had not heard that. The BBC reporter Holly Jones that was on the bridge that night, the day after she gave an interview about what she had witnessed and how she had comforted a French woman who had been hit by the van, she said the fiancé was missing and they raised the alert he may have gone in the water at the time. I presumed that as nothing else was mentioned about this they had located him but sadly it seems they haven't. How sad the families must be in pieces.

They have identified four victims, have seven bodies but four people still missing. I hope someone's in the hospital, but I fear they're in the river.

You are not in the minority, it is bloody awful but that said, I do understand the difficulties involved. It is particularly hard when there is no ID in pockets etc and with non-nationals, awaiting fingerprints etc. My heart goes out to those with family members ''missing''. Many will be preparing themselves for the worst.
A mum talks about it here (trigger warning, refers to 7/7 attacks) and a policeman explains the problems involved when they are not 100% sure.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40132395

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/25/husband-manchester-victim-criticises-police-18-hour-wait-news/amp/

Husband of a victim of the Manchester bombing had to wait 18 hours to be told.

Yes it's horrible. I doubt any changes will be made though.

What can they do? They have to be 100% certain. Heartbreaking for the families

If the victims happened to have id on them, it gives the police and coroner a rough idea who they are. This is why they say that they have done preliminary identification. But they cannot go on this alone, the victim may have been holding a friend's id for safekeeping at the time, or may have a form of id without a picture. They do not want to cause unnecessary grief by contacting families if it them turns out it is not their loved one who was a victim. Especially in times such as on the bridge and in Manchester, when attempts to save victims, and indeed the initial running away, may have caused identifying materials to end up on or near someone else's body.

I think if the circumstantial evidence is strong enough, carrying ID and phone, looks like photos on passports and driving licence (from databases) and know to be missing then someone high up in the police should be able to make the decision to sit down face to face with families and prepare them for the worst, just like a doctor might do if they thought a patient was likely to die.

Obviously after a bombing or similar attack then that wouldn't be possible.

And some of that has clearly been happening. There was a statement, I think yesterday, from the sister of a then officially missing man, where they said that the police had informed them that a man had been found with a form of identity on him, but that he had not yet been fully formally identified.

Formal ID needs to be unequivocal for the sake of the victims' families and for the ongoing investigation. Unfortunately, in cases where there are numerous casualties to cross check this takes time. The consequences of making mistakes in identifying casualties are horrendous. I'm certain, just as with the first responders, those involved with ID are working as quickly as they can to the best of their ability for everyone involved.

Also they need to find next of kin - there are lots of people on MN who are no/low contact. They may have informed somebody, but not everybody on social media.

If you've been stabbed in the face enough (which some of this people seem to have been in London), and aren't carrying ID it will take a while to identify you even if your loved ones have been contacted. Can be a slow process. A paramedic friend who was on the scene in Manchester said some victims had had limbs blown off, skin burns etc, which might have explained the delays.

Personal experience talking... it is awful being in that limbo where you know your loved one must surely have been killed in an incident but you have yet to receive formal identification from a coroner (was dental records in my case and they were harder to get than you might imagine - a horrible day spent calling every dentist in likely areas asking if they treated the person and then arranging for release of records etc)

Even when you know there is no other explanation than they have been killed, it is very hard to even begin the journey of acceptance until that official ID is complete.

I think you ABU op and that there are good reasons for the apparent delays which may not be obvious to you. I strongly doubt that anyone is deliberately dragging their heels in these circumstances.

This happened after 9/11.

Countless people are still unidentified/unaccounted for/missing.

People don't seem to realise it's not as easy to locate/identify people after these events as they think.

Imagine the outcry if they got it wrong. These rules are in place for a very good reason. It's frustrating but I can understand why they have this process.

I think you ABU op and that there are good reasons for the apparent delays which may not be obvious to you. I strongly doubt that anyone is deliberately dragging their heels in these circumstances

^ This

The authorities cannot confirm ID until relevant checks have been carried out and, as other posters have said, the consequences of getting it wrong are horrendous which is why a robust process is required. No short cuts.

It's not about cruelty, it's about getting it right.

When I was a teenager police came to a friends house and told their parents she had been killed in a road traffic accident. She hadn't. She had lent her jacket, with her ID in it, to a friend. They looked fairly similar and the injuries from the accident probably made it harder to realise the ID was not a match.

The impact on my friend's family was not insignificant. They spent almost a whole day thinking she was dead and informed a lot of people (friend was staying with a secret boyfriend and did not go home until the evening). The family of the girl who actually died didn't learn about it until nearly 24 hours after it had happened and, from what my friend said, found the whole thing very hard to accept.

I appreciate that families feel in limbo without an official ID, but the fallout of misidentification is horrendous and can last a long, long time. Being quick and less formal over identification is only kinder when it's right, but the strict requirements of coroners have come about because the stuff that seems obvious and close enough and surely we can let the poor family have some closure, is in fact not quite so obvious, not quite close enough and not always the right closure.

In a radio 4 prog it said a formal id is DNA, dental records or a serial number on a metal implant such as a hip replacement.
So not a quick procedure.

It v sad. 7/7 having been connected was chaos as their were so many Walking wounded that just set off home or wandered dazed back into their lives. Each response to each incident needs to be different as the victims and survivors have experiences unique to the scenario. 7/7 was treated like 9/11 where their were v few waking wounded.
There are 2 additional things that people haven't mentioned above - occasionally people use these events to disappear and secondly some I'd can get detached from bodies. On 7/7 on the worst hit kings cross tube I was told a pick pocket had been involved with numerous stolen wallets etc on his person meaning they had more Id than bodies and seriously injured.

Trouble is, in the past, the authorities have been criticised for having relatives pick their loved ones out of a selection of dead people, and sometimes their loved one isn't there, which is upsetting for some of those people. So procedures have been put in place to prevent that, and the authorities would rather do the identifying themselves. They cannot win - relatives either want unequivocal identification which takes time, or they want to see their relative sooner which means they will see dead bodies which they don't know.

It would be awful if a family were misinformed. Given the sterling work done by the emergency services and the ongoing work medical staff are doing I think it's awful to be criticising the proper identification of those affected. And no surprise it's the bloody Fail publishing such a story.

Yabvvu

Read any one of the other threads on this since the Manchester bombing.

They have to get it right.

Last time a thread was made about this I posted this - I think it's a good reminder as to why it's important to take their time, even when there aren't catastrophic facial injuries like from a bomb.

I don't usually hold with conspiracy theories but there's something going on.

As the London attack happened, social media went wild, including repeated reports of a 12 year old girl being hurt. My friend in the US said it was all over his news feed, so did a friend in Canada. Then suddenly that disappeared.

The girlfriend of missing Sebastian Belanger has been repeating that her posts for info are removed.

If after the GE on Thursday, it comes out that the news was buried/suppressed, we'll know TM and the Tories didn't want this to derail their campaign.