It’s something disturbing that has happened all throughout history. Sometimes a person is presumed to be dead but later turns out to be alive.
There was a time when measures were taken to help prevent people from being buried alive, such as rigging up a string and bell through a coffin. This would allow a living person to ring for help if they had been falsely declared dead.
Nowadays we’d hardly give such a thing a second thought since we live in an age rife with technology. However, sometimes living people are still mistakenly declared dead.
The bizarre tale that begins with 29-year-old inmate Awufo Inu John failing to appear in court. It was then that he was discovered, unresponsive, on the floor of his cell.
Although three doctors certified that John was deceased, his family alleges that only one actually examined him.
They claim that the other two simply signed off on the certification, with no examination, after the first doctor examined John and declared him dead.
After being declared deceased, John was placed in a body bag and transported to a morgue to undergo an autopsy.
Four hours after being declared dead, John was discovered to actually be alive when snoring was detected coming from the body bag.
According to the news, it is suspected that John may have experienced catalepsy, which causes “a person’s vital signs slow down to the point of being almost imperceptible,” but this has not been confirmed.
Inside Edition reported that his family believes he may not have been taking his epilepsy medication correctly, and that may have caused the unresponsiveness.
An investigation has been ordered to investigate how this happened. There is no word as to what consequences the doctors may face if what the family alleges is true.
Whatever is discovered in this investigation may help other doctors reduce even further the chance of mistakenly declaring people dead.
There is no word yet as to whether John or his family will file a lawsuit, but the family’s anger about how close they came to actually losing their loved one was evident in their interview quotes.
“a furious relative said, ‘They had already marked the body to open it with the scalpel.'”
Although it began in a tragic way, the story does have a happy ending, with John reportedly asking about his wife when he first regained consciousness, indicating he had not suffered any brain damage.