A COUPLE in the U.S. state of Alaska who had been told by police that their son had died in a car crash were stunned when they went to inform his girlfriend and their son opened the door.

    Karen Priest said her husband, Jay, started sobbing, and she was in shock. “There are no words,” she said over the weekend. “We just kept staring at him.”

    Justin Priest, 29, said he had got up to let out his dog at 5:30 a.m. when his parents and brother knocked. They started screaming when he opened the door.

    The Priests had been awakened at 3 a.m. Thursday by a police officer who told them that Justin had died when his car crashed into a tree at high speed.

    They started calling relatives and then went to tell another son, Cody, who collapsed when he heard the news.

    The parents and Cody then drove to find Justin’s longtime girlfriend, Julia.

    Jay knocked on the door. “It opens, and right here is Justin. I don’t even see it, but Jay is sobbing. It doesn’t compute to me. Then I see him,” Karen said. “You want it to be true, but you go, ‘Am I hallucinating?’ Justin didn’t know what was going on.”

    “I didn’t know why they were yelling and screaming,” Justin Priest said. “I was mostly asleep. They were yelling, ‘Praise Jesus! It’s a miracle.’” After “lots of hugging, lots of tears,” he called Juneau police to tell them they had identified the wrong Justin Priest.

    Police later said the Justin Priest who had died was aged 33.

    (SD-Agencies)