AirAsia QZ8501: First victim identified via personal items

Indonesian local security guards and a relative carry a coffin with the remains of Hayati Lutfiah at her funeral in Surabaya on January 1, 2015. - AFP

SURABAYA: The first victim of the ill-fated AirAsia Flight QZ8501 has been identified as Hayati Lutfiah Hamid from Sidoharjo, East Java.

Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) East Java head Budiyono said this was confirmed after a post mortem was carried out on the remains.

“We managed to match her identity based on her finger prints and personal belongings,” he told a press conference at Bhayangkara Hospital, here Thursday.

He said the personal belongings were an identity card, a necklace and a bracelet with her name engraved on, as confirmed by the family members.

However, a second body could not be positively identified as yet as the data provided by family members did not match the victim.

“The only thing we can tell you is that he has long hair, a mole the size of 4mmx4mm on the left side of his upper lip and his height is around 145cm to 150cm,” Budiyono said.

Hayati was travelling to Singapore with her 10-year-old daugher Naura Kanita Rosada Suseno, her husband Djoko Suseno and mother-in-law Soemanik Saeran.

Hayati was among eight people whose remains had been retrieved from the crash site in the Java Sea.