The Family who Died in a Traffic Accident

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This is a story my friend, a police officer, experienced a few years ago.

He works for the expressway traffic police unit, and one day, he was suddenly summoned by the chief of another division.

When he asked what it was about, the chief said he wanted to know the details of an accident that had occurred about a week earlier on the Tōhoku Expressway.

The accident in question was a car crash, where a car carrying a family of four crashed into the central divider late at night on a weekday, killing everyone inside.

Here are a few more details about the accident:

A long-haul truck driver reported that a passenger car was on fire near the ×× Interchange.

My friend, who was on night duty, rushed to the scene, but by the time he arrived, everyone inside the car had already been burned to death.

Later, the victims were identified through dental records, which revealed they were a family from the Nishitama area of Tokyo.

The deceased were Tadashi Katō (alias), his wife Emi, their eldest son Shōichi, and their daughter Ena.

No clear causes for the crash were found — no alcohol was detected, and the road had no visibility.

So the case was simply treated as a regular accident caused by driver error.

My friend told the division chief, 

“There was nothing unusual about the accident.”

But then the chief said, “Actually…” and explained why he had called him in.

The day before, a boy had shown up at a police station in ○○ City, Tokyo, saying:

“I saw on the news that I had died… so, who am I?”

Here’s a summary of the boy’s story:

The morning before last, he overslept and woke up to find that his entire family was gone.

He figured they had just gone out somewhere and didn’t think much of it.

But when night came and nobody returned or contacted him, he grew worried and called the police.

However, the police dismissed it as a child’s prank and hung up.

He contacted his grandparents and relatives, but none of them had heard from his family.

He waited until morning, and then from the TV news he had left on, he discovered that he, along with his whole family, had supposedly died in the accident.

He knew that couldn’t be true, so he went to the police station to find out more.

When my friend re-examined the accident reports, he noticed something strange.

The dental record check confirmed the identities of the father, mother, and daughter without a doubt.

But the eldest son’s body had been too severely damaged in the head for proper comparison, and the report noted that his identity couldn’t be fully confirmed.

What’s more, the accident had happened near Aomori, but the parents were from the Chūbu region and had no acquaintances in the Tōhoku area.

At the time, it was simply assumed they had been on a trip, but there were too many odd points.

A few days after submitting the documents, my friend asked the division chief if there had been any progress.

The chief hesitated, then answered:

“The boy resembled the deceased eldest son physically and in appearance, but his dental records didn’t match, so we judged him to be a different person.

When we told him that, he became hysterical and had to be taken to a police hospital with a psychiatric ward.

We also searched the family’s home, but there was no sign anyone had been living there since the accident.

When the boy was told this, he had a complete mental breakdown.

In the end, no one could determine who he really was, and he’s still in the hospital.

It’s all been settled now, so don’t get involved any further.”

After telling me all this, my friend added one last thought:

“Who on earth was the charred body, then?

And who was that boy claiming to be the eldest son?

And why was that family traveling on a weekday, heading toward a place where they knew no one?”

I can’t help thinking that maybe they were running away from something.

But running from what? That’s what I don’t know.