Gambling911.com mentioned in the Washington Post

A Heartbreaking Mix-Up

June 4, 2006

More than 1,000 mourners attended Whitney Cerak's funeral. The teenage Indiana college student died with four others on April 26 when a tractor-trailer slammed into their van. Meanwhile, relatives kept a vigil at the bedside of the sole survivor, Laura VanRyn, 22, as she slowly returned to consciousness.

"While certain things seem to be coming back to her," VanRyn's sister Lisa wrote in a blog on May 29, "she still has times when she'll say things that don't make any sense."


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One reason for that, authorities announced last week, is that the identities of the two young women were mixed up at the accident scene. The blonde Taylor University student slowly recuperating in Grand Rapids, Mich., it turned out, is Cerak, 19, not VanRyn.

VanRyn was buried at Cerak's funeral.

The VanRyns said their hearts were aching. In a joint statement, the two families wrote that they were praying together. Anticipating questions about the mix-up after the horrific crash, which left bodies and belongings strewn at the scene, they said the "two wonderful young women shared a striking similarity in size, hair, facial features and body type."

Acquaintances identified the woman airlifted to the hospital as VanRyn, the Grant County, Ind., coroner said.

The Associated Press reported that Coroner Ron Mowery, who misidentified VanRyn's body as that of survivor Cerak, said the "entire disaster" may have been avoided if a deputy coroner had not urged Cerak's sister to delay looking at the corpse. She never looked.


-- Peter Slevin


Which Hurricane Will Win?



You can bet on a busy hurricane season, meteorologists have been warning this year. Or, well, you could bet on a slow one.

A fascination with tropical cyclones, piqued by Katrina and other storms of recent years, has inspired gambling Web sites and bettors to place wagers on the frequency and strength of the prospective storms.