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For almost a month, an Edmonton family has been struggling with the grief over their son’s death while on vacation in the Caribbean and the frustration of trying to bring his body home.<\/p>\n
Noman Hayati, 23, died in a car crash on March 26, just two days into a two-week vacation in the Dominican Republic. He was a passenger on a drive to explore the region when the car crashed and caught on fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His body was burned beyond recognition along with his personal documents, according to his family. The driver of the car survived.<\/p>\n
The family told CBC News that it led to challenges with identifying the body.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took me to the body that was my nephew and it was completely unrecognizable,\u201d Hayati\u2019s uncle, Mostafa Siddiqi, told CBC\u2019s Edmonton AM.<\/p>\n
Siddiqi had travelled to the Dominican Republic within hours of hearing the news in hopes of bringing his nephew home. It was the first of many efforts to repatriate Hayati\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were taken to the morgue. There were flies all around. The smell was very strong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Hayati\u2019s identity was confirmed and the family was able to receive a death certificate after a DNA test and dental X-ray verification.<\/p>\n
‘Problem with the registration’<\/p>\n
Siddiqi believed the process to return Hayati\u2019s body would begin shortly after.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat didn\u2019t happen. A week passed. We called the funeral home and they said there was a problem with the registration. They said they cannot release the body of my nephew,\u201d Siddiqi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the funeral home said this is out of our hands and we cannot do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family credits Hayati\u2019s mother, who recently travelled to the Dominican Republic, for finally getting the process moving.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said if no one listens to her, she was going to go on the street and protest,\u201d said Shaista Siddiqi, Hayati\u2019s aunt.<\/p>\n
Once Hayati\u2019s mother arrived at the funeral home, she was told the process to repatriate her son was again in motion, said the family.<\/p>\n
The registration office in the Dominican Republic hadn’t begun until recently to process the necessary documentation to begin the process of transferring his remains to Edmonton, family representatives said.<\/p>\n
In a statement to CBC News, Global Affairs Canada said it is \u201caware of the death of a Canadian citizen in the Dominican Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConsular officials are providing consular assistance and are liaising with local authorities. Consular services are tailored to the needs of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Global Affairs Canada said privacy considerations prevent any further information from being disclosed.<\/p>\n
CBC News contacted the Embassy of Canada to the Dominican Republic but did not hear back by publication time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No chance to mourn<\/p>\n
His father, Hamid Hayati described Noman as a kind, caring and hardworking person.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good man. He was a good student. He was a good soccer player,\u201d Hayati said.<\/p>\n
They say his remains are expected to arrive home on Friday.<\/p>\n
They still have concerns about the process and confusion around why the process took nearly a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like relief. For the last three weeks we haven\u2019t had a chance to mourn,\u201d said his uncle. \u201cIt cost us a lot of time, money and pain to get things done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-625794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}