Woman declared ‘dead’ found alive inside Detroit funeral home
A Detroit woman was declared dead and shipped off to a funeral home Sunday — only for shocked workers to discover she was still alive.
The woman, who was not identified, was sent to the James H. Cole Funeral Home by her family after she was found unresponsive in her apartment and declared dead after paramedics failed to resuscitate her, ABC News reported.
That’s when workers at the mortuary made the startling discovery — she was still breathing.
“While it is our practice not to comment on open investigations, we can confirm that on Sunday, August 23, 2020, we received a call to pick up a Southfield woman who was deceased,” the funeral home said in a statement to ABC.
“Upon arrival at the funeral home, our staff confirmed she was breathing and called EMS.”
The woman had been found in her home in the Detroit suburb around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Southfield Fire Chief Johnny Menifee told the outlet.
“The paramedics performed CPS and other life-reviving methods for 30 minutes,” the chief said. “Given medical readings and the condition of the patient, it was determined at that time that she did not have signs of life.”
Menifee said firefighters called in the Oakland County Medical Examiner’s Office, and “the patient was again determined to have expired and the body was released directly to the family to make arrangements with a funeral of their choosing.”
But later that day funeral officials called the fire department to tell them she was alive.
“They did the normal medical interventions and that’s when the funeral home told them that she was to be embalmed and all that,” Detroit Fire Department Deputy Commissioner Dave Fornell told ABC. “It kind of surprised us. We couldn’t believe it.”
“I talked to our medical people and they said she was breathing, she had a decent heart rate, she had decent blood-oxygen,” Fornell said. “But she was definitely alive when we got there.”
The woman was transported to Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, which declined to release any information.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/08/24/woman-declared-dead-found-alive-inside-detroit-funeral-home/
Photo Credit: WXYZ/ABC