SAO PAULO — A 41-year-old car washer shocked his family when he interrupted a funeral being held for him Monday at his mother’s home in the town of Alagoinhas in northeastern Brazil, police said.

Police inspector Roberto Lima said that on Sunday Jose Marcos Araujo had identified a body at the city morgue as being that of his brother, Gilberto. Lima said Jose Marcos took the body to his mother’s home, where a wake was held.

“The two men closely resembled each other and both worked as car washers,” Lima said, adding the man whose body had been moved was Genivaldo Santos Gama.

A few hours before the Monday burial, “a friend of Gilberto’s saw him walking down the street and told him that his family was mourning him,” he said. “So he went to his mother’s home to let everyone know he was very much alive.”

When Gilberto showed up at his wake, “some people fainted and others were so scared they ran away. It was a big shock,” family friend Maria Menezes told the G1 online news site.