More Than Case No. 09-01458

Ian Shapira: YaVonne and Erwin DuBose stepped outside the D.C. medical examiner's office yesterday to take in the fresh heat. They needed a reprieve. They had just seen a photograph of their 29-year-old daughter, Veronica DuBose, one of nine people killed in this week's Metro train crash, her face yellowed, bruised and swollen.

Asked to identify her body, they pinpointed the mole on her lip and her finely arched eyebrows. Their daughter's life was now boiled down to a bureaucratic moniker — Case No. 09-01458 — on a Proof of Death certificate.

"Unbelievable to see that," said Erwin, 56, a procurement specialist at the National Institutes of Health, standing on the morgue's steps. "It didn't even look like her. I asked if she got burned, but they didn't know. I can't remember. Was there a fire on the train?"