Posted on 08/12/2002 6:46:11 PM PDT by chasio649
Funeral Parlor 'Corpse' Was Alive The Associated Press, Mon 12 Aug 2002
PARIS (AP) — A 68-year-old man was mistakenly declared dead last week and placed in refrigeration at a funeral parlor where a worker noticed he was alive, a Bordeaux hospital said Monday. The man has since died.
The unidentified man, reportedly in the final stages of cancer, was declared dead on Friday at a rest home near the southwest city of Bordeaux. A doctor called to the home issued a death certificate.
The body was then sent to a funeral parlor in nearby Macau, where it was refrigerated for five hours.
An employee at the funeral parlor was preparing the body for burial when he discovered signs of life.
``When I ... opened the cover, I saw that his stomach was moving,'' said Laurent Besson on France-2 television. ``I don't deny that I jumped.''
The man was quickly transferred to the Bordeaux University Hospital and placed in intensive care, where he died at 10 p.m. Sunday, according to the hospital statement.
The head of the hospital's legal medicine department, Sophie Gromb, said that such errors, while rare, are not totally improbable.
``The law says you can't bury someone within 24 hours of his death, precisely to avoid burying people alive,'' she said.
The identity of the doctor who signed the initial death certificate was not made public.
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