She had an accident, she was declared dead but they found her alive in the morgue

A South African woman who was pronounced dead by paramedics in the place of a dramatic traffic accident was found alive after several hours of being in the refrigerator of a morgue, officials said Monday.

An ambulance service confirmed that the woman was declared dead by paramedics who helped those involved in an accident outside Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, early on June 24.

Then, the morgue's forensic staff noticed that the woman was alive after spending several hours in the refrigerator where they placed the corpses of two other victims, who died in the accident after being fired from the car by the impact of the crash.

"We follow our procedures, we have no idea how this happened," said Gerrit Bradnick, Emergency Operations Operations Manager. "The team is totally devastated, we are not in this to declare dead people alive, we are in this job to keep people alive," he added.

After being found alive, the woman was taken to the hospital. The lifeguards maintain that after the accident, all the checks that must be done were made, breathing, pulse, so the patient was declared dead.

The emergency company launched an investigation to find out how this error happened. "Paramedics are trained to determine death, not us," a source at the Carletonville morgue told the Sowetan newspaper. "You never expect to open a refrigerator and find someone alive. Can you imagine if we had started the autopsy and killed her? "Asked the forensic technician.