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The unnamed woman had been certified dead by paramedics at the scene of a pile-up in the early hours of June 24
JOHANNESBURG: A South African woman who paramedics had declared dead after a horrific car crash was later found alive in a mortuary fridge, emergency services said on Monday.
Ambulance service Distress Alert confirmed that the unnamed woman had been certified dead by paramedics at the scene of the pile-up outside of Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, in the early hours of June 24.
Mortuary technicians then found her alive in a morgue fridge several hours after the crash in which the victims’ car rolled, throwing all three occupants clear of the vehicle, killing two of them.
“We followed our procedures – we’ve got no idea how it happened,” Distress Alert operations manager Gerrit Bradnick told AFP.
“The crew is absolutely devastated – we’re not in the business of declaring living people dead, we’re in the business of keeping people alive.”
“All the right checks were done – breathing, pulse – so the patient was declared deceased,” he said.
The company has now launched an investigation.
“Paramedics are trained to determine death, not us,” a source at the Carletonville mortuary told the Sowetan newspaper.
“You never expect to open a fridge and find someone in there alive. Can you imagine if we had begun the autopsy and killed her.
Source: Gulf News: South Africa
Tacky Comment: They found her in the fridge, and she was cold…..
