Mourners at a funeral were stunned when the woman who was in the coffin suddenly started to try to breathe again. The amazing incident happened in Ecuador when Bella Montoya, 76, was declared dead following a stroke.
After this she was placed in a coffin, and relatives and friends began to observe a wake. After five hours her family began to change her clothes before she was due to be buried, the BBC reported.
Then to their shock she suddenly started gasping for air. They immediately contacted the emergency services and Ms Montoya is back in intensive care.
Ecuador’s health ministry has set up a committee to investigate the incident. In a statement, the ministry said that the woman went into cardiorespiratory arrest - a loss of breathing and heart function - and did not respond to resuscitation attempts. The doctor on duty confirmed her death.
Her son, Gilber Rodolfo Balberán Montoya, was quoted by local media as saying that his mother had been “admitted around 09:00, and at noon a doctor told me [she] died”. Someone at the wake was taking a video and it was posted on social media showing her breathing heavily in the open coffin, with people trying to help her.
Paramedics are then seen arriving and observing Ms Montoya before moving her on to a stretcher and into an ambulance. Now she is in intensive care in the same hospital where doctors declared her death.
Mr Balberán said: “Little by little, I am grasping what has happened. Now I only pray for my mother’s health to improve. I want her alive and by my side.”
