olena
<font color=green>Emerald Angel<br><font color=mag
- Joined
- May 12, 2001
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LONDON - Newly widowed John Walker could not believe it when bailiffs wrote to demand that his wife pay a series of parking fines.
He wrote back to tell them his 44-year-old wife Zitta had died in January of breast cancer and had sold her car, a Peugeot 405, for scrap more than two years before. But the threatening letters kept coming.
When a demand for 90 pounds (US$144) arrived, Walker, 40, of Thorpe Willoughby near Selby in northeast England, responded dramatically.
Carrying the urn containing his wife's ashes and her death certificate, he marched into the offices of York Council and laid them on the desk of a startled official.
"I had already rung them and sent a letter with a copy of her death certificate which they said they didn't receive and the bailiffs still said they were coming to take items of property from the house," Walker said.
"That's when I flipped my lid so I took the casket down to show them."
When the official saw the casket, said Walker, he became "very apologetic."
"He said that ... he did not think the ashes were essential. I did because I just couldn't stand it any more."
Walker said his wife had written to authorities when she got rid of the car, but the form had failed to arrive and she remained the registered owner.
A York Council spokesman insisted that officials had dealt with the matter "absolutely by the book."
"No documentary evidence has ever been provided to say there was a change of ownership," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Mr. Walker then informed us over the telephone that Mrs. Walker had since died and as soon as he was able to provide us with documentation we canceled the action."
He wrote back to tell them his 44-year-old wife Zitta had died in January of breast cancer and had sold her car, a Peugeot 405, for scrap more than two years before. But the threatening letters kept coming.
When a demand for 90 pounds (US$144) arrived, Walker, 40, of Thorpe Willoughby near Selby in northeast England, responded dramatically.
Carrying the urn containing his wife's ashes and her death certificate, he marched into the offices of York Council and laid them on the desk of a startled official.
"I had already rung them and sent a letter with a copy of her death certificate which they said they didn't receive and the bailiffs still said they were coming to take items of property from the house," Walker said.
"That's when I flipped my lid so I took the casket down to show them."
When the official saw the casket, said Walker, he became "very apologetic."
"He said that ... he did not think the ashes were essential. I did because I just couldn't stand it any more."
Walker said his wife had written to authorities when she got rid of the car, but the form had failed to arrive and she remained the registered owner.
A York Council spokesman insisted that officials had dealt with the matter "absolutely by the book."
"No documentary evidence has ever been provided to say there was a change of ownership," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Mr. Walker then informed us over the telephone that Mrs. Walker had since died and as soon as he was able to provide us with documentation we canceled the action."
