Traffic chaos as corpse falls from hearse
October 30, 2003
A hearse overturned on a German motorway yesterday, smashing the
coffin and dumping the corpse onto the roadway, along with a bag of
coffin nails that brought traffic to a halt, authorities
said.
"The driver had fallen asleep ... and yanked the steering wheel
around when he woke up," said Jens O'Brien, spokesman for the
regional government in Duesseldorf, western Germany.
"There were nails strewn over 50 metres, and the corpse fell out
onto the ground."
The A40 motorway was closed for an hour, and traffic banked up for
six kilometres, as police collected the nails and removed the
corpse.
The hearse had been transporting the body from Wuerzburg, in
southern Germany. The driver was slightly hurt.
