A father mistakenly declared dead after going missing eight years ago has been reunited with his family after his son spotted him on television, police said on Thursday.
The family of John Delaney thought he had died when he disappeared in April 2000.
They held a funeral and cremation after police found what they thought was his body three years later.
But Delaney, 71, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, had in fact been admitted to hospital in a confused state 10 days after he was reported missing.
Suffering from amnesia caused by a head injury, he couldn’t give police any clues about his name, address or family. When further police checks failed to uncover his identity, he was given the new name David Harrison and handed over to social services. They put him in a care home where he stayed for the next eight years.
Meanwhile, a badly decomposed body found in the grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary in 2003 was mistakenly identified as that of Delaney. His family was informed and they arranged a funeral and cremation later that year.
The truth of what happened to Delaney only emerged earlier this year when he appeared on a daytime TV show about missing people.
His son John Renehan, 42, happened to be watching TV and recognized his father. The pair were reunited after DNA tests confirmed they were related.
“I had just finished my night shift and was ready to go to sleep when I turned on the TV,” Renehan told the Daily Telegraph’s online service.
“As I was turning away I got a glimpse of who I thought was my father. For the rest of the day I could not get to sleep. I was in shock,” he said.
In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said it had made mistakes and the family had been through a “traumatic” ordeal.
“At that time, only paper records of people reported missing from home existed,” it said.
Police are trying to establish the identity of the man who was cremated in 2003.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS