LOUISVILLE — Two Kentucky families are struggling to cope with a horrific case of mistaken identity that one family member described as a “Twilight Zone thing.”

        A week ago, John Grubs Jr. and Jeremy Philemon were in a car that hit a tree and split in two. For three days after the accident, authorities thought the boy fighting for his life in a Louisville hospital bed was Jeremy, 15, and the teen-ager killed in the crash was John, 16.

        But moments after a funeral on Saturday for the boy identified as John, the truth came out. John Grubs was still alive. Jeremy was the teen in the casket.

        It isn't clear how such a mix-up could persist for three days. Each family denies responsibility.

        Jeremy's grandmother Carol Kerns said she and her daughter - Jeremy's mother - doubted early on that the boy in the hospital bed was Jeremy.

        “When my daughter did see him, she said, "That don't look like Jeremy,”' Ms. Kerns said. “The hospital said he suffered head trauma when he went through the windshield. Every time she'd say something, they'd say it was head trauma.”

        Ken Marshall, a spokesman for University Hospital, said that John Grubs Sr. and other relatives identified the dead boy as John Grubs Jr. and that Jeremy's family identified the other boy as Jeremy and sat vigil at his hospital bed.

        Joseph Greer, the sheriff in Meade County where the accident happened, and Richard Greathouse, the Jefferson County coroner, agreed that grief-stricken members of each family simply misidentified the crash victims.

        Mr. Greer said he went to the hospital Sunday and didn't see any disfiguring injuries to John's face.

        “I knew right away it was John Grubs,” he said.

        John's aunt, Joyce Cramps of Shepherdsville, Ky., denied that her family identified the teen killed in the crash as John.

        “He had not been cleaned up from the accident,” she said. “The tubes, everything was there, the blood, everything. We did not make a positive identification.”

        On Saturday, some mourners at the W.G. Hardy Funeral Home in Valley Station, Ky., expressed doubts about the identity of the teen in the casket, Ms. Cramps said.

        Jeremy's grandmother said the mix-up was revealed after one of Jeremy's friends visited the funeral home Saturday and recognized the teen in the casket as Jeremy. She said the boy went to the hospital to tell Jeremy's mother, Kim, who then told her own mother, Ms. Kerns.

        Ms. Kerns said she went to the funeral home and asked to see the teen in the casket. She knew it was Jeremy.

        “My grandson was trying to grow a beard,” she said. ”When I saw this boy in the casket, he still had his little whiskers.”

        The family that had just held a funeral service for John Grubs and was about to have the body cremated suddenly had to deal with the fact that John was still alive but critically injured.

        “Everybody was devastated and crying and in shock and confused,” Ms. Cramps recalled.

        In the days since, Ms. Kerns said, ”It's hit us that Jeremy's been down there (at the funeral home) by himself for four days, and nobody knew he was there.”

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