Wrong coffin taken to Cape funeral – report

A Cape Town man was traumatised when he opened the casket at his dead wife’s funeral to find a stranger inside.

“I opened my wife’s casket and she didn’t look right. I immediately knew something was wrong,” Michael Galant told the Daily Voice.

“My daughter came to me and said: ‘That’s not mommy’, and then I knew this was a big mistake.”

Magdalene Galant (58) died of a heart attack on Saturday.

Her daughter Leota Lakay told the newspaper the undertakers could not explain the body swap, and had at first tried to convince her they had delivered the right body.

She said the company later admitted to pulling out the wrong drawer at the morgue.

The Galant family reportedly tried to stop the funeral service, but the undertakers convinced them to go ahead.

Afterwards, the family was escorted to the mortuary and was shown the right body.

According to the Daily Voice today the company apologised and promised to help with a second funeral.

- Sapa