
A woman has died a few days after mourners at her funeral were shocked to find her alive in her coffin.
Bella Montoya, 76, was declared dead for the first time by a doctor at a hospital in Babahoyo last week.
But when the mourners who attended her vigil heard her knocking on her coffin, she was immediately taken back to the same hospital for treatment.
After seven days in intensive care, Ecuador’s health ministry confirmed that she died on Friday of stroke.
The ministry’s statement added that she remains under “permanent observation” while in hospital
following her death on June 16, Ms. Montoya was returned to a funeral home before being buried in a public cemetery, local media reported.
A commission of experts has been assembled by the Ecuadorian health ministry to review her case.
Ms. Montoya was placed in a coffin and taken to a funeral parlor in Babahoyo, southwest of the capital Quito, after she was pronounced dead on June 9.
But after almost five hours inside, the woman was shocked after her relatives opened the coffin to change her clothes for the funeral.
A few minutes later, she was pulled out by firefighters and taken back to the same hospital.
Bella Montoya is not the only person “to be alive” after being officially declared dead.
In February, an 82-year-old woman was found gasping for breath in a funeral home in New York State. She had been pronounced dead three hours earlier in a nursing home.