An air-conditioning breakdown at Faro morgue meant that the body of a Dutch woman who died in a freak car accident near her home in Tavira was delivered back to her devastated family in “an advanced stage of decomposition”.
The Office of Legal Medicine is reported to have ‘indicated’ that the situation was such that the funeral “should go ahead with a closed coffin”, writes Correio da Manhã.
Understandably, the husband and children of Anthonia Hamburger, 68, were horrified. They were also confused.
Dardy Hamburger, 77, explained that his wife’s body was in the mortuary for less than three days.
“I cannot believe her body could have decomposed in a place with freezers”, he said – suggesting “something else may have happened and we are not being told”.
The trauma piled onto tragedy was “very upsetting”, he added.
“I couldn’t say goodbye to my wife for the last time. Nor could my children”.
Dardy escaped with minor injuries from in the accident that killed his wife on Saturday May 21 (click here).
A source for the Institute of Legal Medicine has since told CM that whenever there is an air-conditioning breakdown, “parts have to come from Germany, which takes time”.
In the intervening period, bodies are kept at Faro Hospital, said the source.
