'Dead' woman found alive in morgue fridge
Ambulance service says paramedics found 'no form of life' at car crash scene
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Your support makes all the difference.A woman pronounced dead after a car crash in South Africa has been found alive in a morgue fridge.
The unnamed victim was involved in a pile-up outside Carletonville, near Johannesburg, in the early hours of 24 June.
Her car reportedly turned over, throwing all three occupants out and killing two of them.
The woman was declared dead at the scene and placed in a fridge.
Private ambulance company Distress Alert said she showed “no form of life”, South African news outlet TimesLive reported
But when a morgue worker checked her body, they found she was breathing.
She was taken to a hospital east of Johannesburg and an investigation was opened into the incident.
Gerrit Bradnick, Distress Alert operations manager, said paramedics followed the correct procedures to ensure the woman was not alive‚ including looking for signs of a pulse and breathing.
“Equipment used to determine life showed no form of life on the woman,” he told Times Live.
“This did not happen because our paramedics are not properly trained. There is no proof of any negligence by our crew."
It is not the first time such a discovery has been made in South Africa. In 2011, a 50-year-old man spent 24 hours in an Eastern Cape mortuary before he woke up and started screaming.
In 2016, a man from KwaMashu was declared dead at the scene of a road traffic accident, but was found breathing the next day when his family went to view his body. He was taken to hospital but reportedly died around five hours later.
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