The fire department says paramedics tried to resuscitate the woman for 30 minutes.
Employers at a Detroit funeral discovered a young woman breathing hours after she was pronounced dead by paramedics and was sent to the morgue by her grieving family, authorities said.
The woman, whose name has not been released, was found alive at the James H. Cole Funeral Home on Sunday and taken to a hospital, authorities said.
“While it is our practice not to comment on open investigations, we can confirm that on Sunday 23 August 2020 we received a call to pick up a Southfield woman who had died,” the mortuary said in a statement. statement to ABC News on Monday. “Upon her arrival at the funeral, our staff confirmed that she was breathing and called EMS.”
The woman was pronounced dead after paramedics responded to a house in the Detroit suburb of Southfield at 7:34 a.m. Sunday on a call from an unresponsive woman, Southfield Fire Department Chief Johnny L. Menifee said in a statement.
Menifee said the woman was not breathing when paramedics arrived at her home.
“The paramedics performed 30 minutes of CPR and other life-changing methods,” Menifee said. “Seen medical readings and the patient’s condition was determined at that time that she had no signs of life.”
Since there was no indication for foul play, paramedics contacted the Oakland County Medical Examiner’s Office as part of the standard procedure and passed on the medical data about the woman they thought was dead, Menifee said.
“The patient was re-determined to abort and the body was immediately released to the family to make arrangements with a funeral of their choice,” Menifee said.
But an official at Oakland County Medical Examiner’s Office told ABC News Monday that it was not involved in the woman’s statement and referred all questions to the Southfield Fire Department.
“In an effort to respect the privacy of her family, the Southfield Fire Department is not currently releasing any personal information about the patient,” Menifee said in a statement.
Staff at the James H. Cole Funeral home contacted the Detroit Fire Department after they brought the woman to the cemetery and saw that she was alive, Dave Fornell, Detroit Fire Department deputy commissioner, told ABC News.
Fornell said the call the fire department received from the funeral was for a person who was having difficulty breathing and that a crew of medical aid workers did not know the full story until they arrived.
“They did the normal medical interventions and that’s when the funeral told them they were going to be balsam and all that. It surprised our kind. We could not believe it,” Fornell said.
He said the woman was taken to Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit. Hospital officials refused to release information about her.
‘I talked to our medical people and they said she was breathing, she had a decent heartbeat, she had decent blood oxygen. But they really lived when we came here, “Fornell said.
The Southfield Police Department is investigating the incident.
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