A DeKalb County family gathered Friday night to remember their 24-year-old relative.
Chandra Rizal died in a car crash Sunday, but police never notified his family.
Family members told Channel 2's Tyisha Fernandes that they actually filed a missing person report, not knowing that their loved one had already crashed and died in a car wreck.
Police said Rizal was driving so fast, that when his car crashed into a wooded area, it clipped the tops of several trees.
"I don't want to imagine what happened Saturday night," friend Brian Odari said about the last time he saw Rizal.
Five days after the family filed the missing persons report, Clarkston police said Rizal had been killed in a car wreck early Sunday morning.
The family didn't know he had been killed for a week.
It crushed the family, because according to their Hindu faith, cremation is supposed to take place within 24 hours of death.
Fernandes started digging through reports and making phone calls and found out that a DeKalb County police officer made a mistake.
"It was a miscommunication on our part," said DeKalb County Police Chief James Conroy.
Police say the DeKalb County police officer went to the address on the victim's license, but no one answered the door.
Investigators said the officer left town the next day and failed to tell anyone that he never made contact with the family.
Conroy said he's investigating and will discipline that officer when the investigation is over. He's also taken steps to make sure this doesn't happen to another family.
"There's a little checklist, and they'll know whether or not that notification was made," Conroy said.
So how did DeKalb police realize they made a mistake?
One of the DeKalb County officers who was at the wreck came across the missing person report that was filed in Clarkston.
That's when police realized the victim's family was still looking for him.
The chief called the family Friday to apologize.
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