Body of 82-Year-Old Gyumri Resident Who Died on June 30th is Missing

The body of 82-year-old Sonik Karapetyan from Gyumri, who passed away on June 29 at the Saint Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center in Yerevan, has gone missing. This was reported to Tert.am by her great-niece, Mariam Malkhasyan.

According to her, the elderly woman had tested positive for coronavirus, whereas she was admitted to the hospital for other health complaints. “She is my grandmother’s sister. She has no descendants, we were taking care of her. She was in poor health and hadn't been able to go outside; she had been at home for four months and could not have contracted the virus. No one in our home is carrier either. About two weeks ago, we transferred her to the Gyumri medical center. The test was positive for an unknown reason. After staying for 2-3 days, she was transferred to the Saint Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center in Yerevan, where she was declared dead on the morning of June 29,” Mariam recounted.

She added that when the death was recorded, the hospital staff indicated that relatives should come to the hospital after noon on June 30 to collect the grandmother's belongings and then proceed with the paperwork at the anatomy office located on Heratsi Street in Yerevan, then go to the anatomy office in Abovyan city to retrieve the body.

On June 30, Mariam's brother went to Abovyan but found no body there, and was told that no one by that name had been accepted in the anatomy office. “From there, my brother went back to the Saint Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center, where they also said, ‘We sent the body to Abovyan.’ He went back to Abovyan, then to the anatomy office on Heratsi Street, and they also said that they had not received any body by that name. My brother personally entered the Abovyan anatomy office and searched among the bodies of those who died from coronavirus, looking to identify our grandmother; he viewed more than 15 corpses,” Mariam said.

She mentioned that after all this, they called the state of emergency headquarters, where they were given a phone number for the Ministry of Health. After not receiving a clear response from there either, the woman's relatives turned to the police.

“Today, through the interrogations, it was revealed that the nurse from the Saint Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center, who lowered the grandmother next to the ambulance that was supposed to take the body to Abovyan, misinterpreted the doctor's handwriting and wrote 'Grigoryan Sonik' instead of 'Karapetyan Sonik.' There is no record at the anatomy office of who the body was given to and where it was taken. Now the police's hypothesis is that whoever took the body has already buried it. They are now making inquiries with burial agencies to locate her, and an exhumation will have to be carried out. We don’t know how many graves we will have to dig to find our grandmother’s body,” Mariam stated.