A 'dead'
teenager woke up in her coffin and screamed for help one day after she
was buried – but died again before desperate relatives could save her.
Grieving family members pictured above breaking through the
concrete tomb from where Neysi Perez, 16, had been heard 'banging and
screaming'.
Relatives
who removed the girl's corpse found that the glass viewing window on
her coffin had been smashed and the tips of her fingers were bruised. But
despite efforts to revive her medics found no signs of life and she was
later returned to the cemetery and reburied in the same mausoleum.
Ms
Perez, who was three months pregnant, reportedly fell unconscious after
waking up in the night to use the outside toilet at her home in La
Entrada, western Honduras.
It was believed she may have collapsed in an apparent panic attack after hearing a burst of gunfire.
But
when the teenager started foaming at the mouth her religious parents
called the local priest believing she had become possessed by an evil
spirit. Relatives
told how the priest tried to exorcise her, but she later became
lifeless and was rushed to hospital, where three hours later doctors
declared her dead.
Ms Perez was buried in the wedding dress she had recently used to get married.
A
day after her funeral, her husband Rudy Gonzales was visiting her grave
at the La Entrada General Cemetery when he heard banging and muffled
screams from inside the concrete tomb and raised the alarm.
The
footage shows desperate family members breaking through the concrete
block tomb with a sledgehammer, before bringing out and opening up Ms
Perez's coffin to try to revive her.
Mr Gozales
told local TV news Primer Impacto: 'I was heartbroken because my
sweetheart had been taken so suddenly from me. I wanted to be near to
her.
'As I put my hand on her grave I could hear noises inside. I heard banging, then I heard her voice. She was screaming for help.
'It had already been a day since we buried her. I couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic, full of hope.'
Cemetery worker Jesus Villanueva said he had also heard noises coming from the grave.
He
said: 'I convinced myself that the screams were coming from somewhere
else. I never imagined that there was someone alive in there.
'That afternoon the girl's husband came to me begging me to get her out because she was alive.
'He was hysterical. The family were soon here and started breaking through the tomb, shouting her name.'
Ms Perez was taken by truck to the nearest hospital in San Pedro Sula, where she was carried in still inside her coffin.
But although medics tried to revive her, all the tests they carried out showed that she was clinically dead.
Doctor Claudia Lopez recalled: 'The whole family rushed in, almost breaking the door down, carrying the girl in her casket.
'I told them
to take her out and put her on the bed. Everybody was claiming she was
alive so I went through all the necessary procedures.
'We
evaluated and tried everything but the girl was dead. They put her back
in the coffin and took her away again, back to the cemetery.'
Doctors believe Ms Perez may have suffered a severe panic attack which could have temporarily stopped her heart activity.
Another
hypothesis is that the teenager had a cataplexy attack, an abrupt
temporary loss of voluntary muscle function typically triggered by a
strong emotional stimulus such as stress or fear, during which the
victim maintains full conscious awareness.
She may then have died from lack of oxygen after waking up inside the closed coffin.
Her
cousin, Carolina Perez, said: 'Once we had taken her out of the tomb I
put my hand on her body. She was still warm, and I felt a faint heart
beat.
'She
had scratches on her forehead and bruises on her fingers. It looked
like she had tried desperately to get out of the casket and hurt
herself.
Ms
Perez's mother Maria Gutierrez firmly believes her daughter was buried
alive and blames medics for being too quick to sign her death
certificate.
She
said: 'The doctors declared her dead but everybody else around me kept
telling me she wasn't. She didn't look like she had died.
'Even
after a day in the tomb the colour of her body was normal, her corpse
didn't smell, she just looked like she was in a deep sleep.
'There was no rigamortis, her body was still flexible, it was impossible that she had been dead for so many hours.
'We were all so happy. After being declared dead for such a long time, everybody was saying that she had come back to life.
'We were all so happy. I thought I was going to get my daughter back.'
Culled from UK Daily Mail
