Grieving family finds wrong body in coffin of dead relative

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- A grieving Lithuanian family had its grief compounded by shock last week when a coffin arrived from Sweden bearing a body that was supposed to belong to a dead relative.

Instead, the 41-year-old truck driver’s family members found a corpse they didn’t recognize and two plastic-wrapped passports inside the sealed zinc coffin.

The passports belonged to their relative and a Polish man whose body they’d received by mistake.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press on Wednesday that a morgue in Sweden acknowledged mixing up the bodies but blamed a transport company for not providing a photograph of the recently deceased Lithuanian.

Ministry spokeswoman Rasa Jakilaitiene says the Polish man’s body has been sent back to Sweden, while the Lithuanian’s remains are expected to arrive home later this week.