Two sisters had to make the gruelling decision to turn off their brother's life support - only to be told a few days before his funeral that he was alive and well.
Rosie Brooks and Brenda Bennett-Johnson on May 13 raced to Chicago's Mercy Hospital after being told by a social worker their brother was in intensive care.
“They had him on the ventilator, and they had a tube in his mouth,” Brooks, one of another four sisters, was quoted saying by CBS.
She said both sisters looked at the man who had been admitted under the name of John Doe but "couldn't identify this as my brother".
Brooks told CBS the confused sisters tried to contest the man was their brother but were told the Chicago Police Department (CPU) had identified him as such.
John had been found near 47th and Wabash on April 29, naked and with no ID.
The patient's condition soon started deteriorating, so the sisters - said to be rarely in touch with their brother - signed the papers to take him off life support.
But just as they'd made arrangements for the casket and suit for the funeral, Brooks said they got a call from their sister Yolanda saying: "It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!"
“‘Brenda! Brenda! It’s Alfonso! It’s Alfonso! I said, ‘You’re kidding!’ I could have almost had a heart attack,” Bennett-Johnson said.
An alive Alfonso Bennett then walked through the door.
Brooks said she had later been told that due to budget cuts police had merely used mugshots to identify him rather than fingerprints.
“It’s sad that it happened like that," Bennett-Johnson said.
"If it was our brother and we had to go through that, that would have been a different thing.
“We made all kinds of decisions on someone that wasn’t our family," she told CBS.
The US news outlet reported the hospital said the family had identified the man as their brother.
Chicago police have launched a probe into the case.
