Man presumed dead stuns mourners by turning up alive

Man presumed dead in train accident stuns mourners by turning up alive



TORONTO (CP) - Dad's not dead.



With those three words, retired welder Dane Squires, presumed dead from an encounter last week with a speeding commuter train, silenced his daughter's grief Thursday and cut short his own memorial service.


Family members were watching the casket get loaded onto the hearse outside an east-end Toronto funeral home when daughter Trina, 28, got an important phone call - from the man she thought was in the coffin.


"She was like, 'Is this a ghost talking to me on the phone? Am I losing it?"' Squires's daughter-in-law Shirley recalled over the phone from her home in St. Philips, Nfld., just outside of St. John's.


"She thought she was losing her mind."


It was Squires's sister Diana Branton who went to identify what she thought was her brother's badly disfigured body last week after a man fitting his description was found dead after being hit by a commuter train.


"I was just so happy, I was hysterical," Branton said Friday as she described her bewildered reaction when she learned of her mistake.


"I was thinking, 'How do I stop the cremation of my brother? He is standing in front of me alive, but they let me believe he was dead. How could they?"'


Squires, 48, learned of the mix-up when he paid a visit to his sister at her east-end Toronto home, where the pair had an emotional reunion before scrambling to call the funeral home where the body was about to be cremated.


"Dad's not dead," Squires said to Trina over the phone.


He described as "horrific" the experience of reading his own obituary notice in the newspaper.


"I really didn't believe it," said Squires, who was born in Newfoundland but has lived on the street in Toronto for nearly 20 years after an on-the-job injury forced him to abandon his trade.


"Everything just exploded for me . . .I felt dead, burnt, dead."


Despite keeping his sense of humour, Squires said he's worried that the whole misadventure is about to catch up with him.


"I'm a dead man walking," he said. "I've got to re-apply for everything, from the birth certificates (on down). I'm a dead man."


Shirley Squires said her delight has been tempered by thoughts about the family of the true victim of the accident, whose identity remained a mystery to police Friday.


"Its a very happy ending to a very sad story, but the poor family of this man who is left to be notified, left to be identified, how are they going to feel about all of this?"





Toronto police Det.-Const. Dave Stirling said Squire's sister identified the dead man as her brother after viewing the body at the coroner's office earlier this week.

"There must have been a likeness," Stirling said. "It certainly is an unfortunate circumstance. It's certainly a shock."

The deceased's body was taken from the funeral home and returned to the coroner's office for further investigation.

Having family members view the body is the most common means of identifying the deceased, said coroner Dr. Barry McLellan.

"This is an extremely rare occurrence," McLellan said. "The relative was quite confident as to the identification."

Shirley said she believes requiring family members to view bodies that have been disfigured or mutilated is a "seriously flawed" process.

"As well as a visual identification of a body, there should be a scientific identification of a body as well," she said.

Police describe the dead man as being between 45 and 50, with long salt-and-pepper-coloured hair and a beard.

Squires's brother Gilbert said his family was in the process of tackling the peculiar task of retracting his brother's obituary, and cancelling a memorial service that was to be held next week in St. John's.


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