Quito, Ecuador

Mourners and family members were stunned after a 76-year-old woman, initially declared dead, started knocking on the coffin door shortly before being buried in the ground.

Advertisment

During the vigil in the Ecuadorian city of Babahoyo on Friday, Bella Montoya suddenly regained consciousness and started breathing normally.

“Her left hand was hitting the side of the coffin, and it was shaking… It gave us all a fright,” Montoya’s son, Gilbert Balberán, told local media, according to Jam Press.

Montoya had died last week from a stroke. Her death certificate declared that she suffered ‘cardiorespiratory arrest due to suffering from an unspecified cerebrovascular disease’, according to BBC.

Advertisment

A doctor on duty had declared her dead after she did not respond to resuscitation, Ecuador’s health ministry said.

Later, the family brought her to a funeral home and were holding a wake on Friday when they started to hear strange sounds.

When they opened the casket, everyone was shocked to find that she was taking a deep breath. A video posted on social media purportedly showed Montoya, a former nurse, breathing in her open coffin and surrounded by two men who came to help her.

Advertisment

“There were about 20 of us there,” Barbera told AP news agency.

×

×

“After about five hours of the wake, the coffin started to make sounds. My mom was wrapped in sheets and hitting the coffin, and when we approached we could see that she was breathing heavily.”

Woman in stable condition

Montoya was later taken to the same hospital that declared her dead, with her son saying that she is in a stable condition.

“My mother is on oxygen. Her heart is stable,” he declared. “The doctor squeezed her hand, and she reacted. They tell me this is a good sign because it means she is reacting little by little.”

“Now, I only ask that my mother’s health improves,” he added. “I want her alive and by my side.”

Though he described the whole episode as a “miracle from God,” Gilbert says he is “coming to grips with what has happened.”

Meanwhile, Ecuador’s Ministry of Health launched a probe against the unnamed doctors involved in the case, and has assigned a technical team to investigate how did the hospital erroneously issue a death certificate.

(With inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE