A man in Spain who was unconscious and presumed dead was actually very much alive — but doctors didn’t know it until he started snoring on the autopsy table.
Three doctors declared 29-year-old Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez to be dead after allegedly completing examinations, according to a report from a Spanish news outlet cited by Live Science. Jiménez was serving time as a prisoner in a northern Spain jail, discovered unconscious in his jail cell Jan. 7.
A family member told the Spanish publication La Voz de Asturias that painted marks were already on Jiménez’s body in preparation for the autopsy, showing how close a call this was. He was found alive four hours after doctors declared him dead, and later reportedly went to the ICU at the Central University Hospital of Asturias in Oviedo, Spain.
Live Science points out that there aren’t universal guidelines to declare a person dead. Doctors may declare death either when someone’s heart stops beating and refuses to start again, or when no neurological activity exists in someone’s brain or brain stem, known as brain death.
In some cases, people allege that they have come back from the dead after going through so-called near-death experiences. In a substantiated case from one study, “consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat.”
Jiménez’s family says he had epilepsy, which they think could account for the situation at hand regarding his presumed death. Live Science notes people with epilepsy could enter a “trancelike state” where their muscles turn rigid and they don’t respond to stimuli, something known as “catalepsy.”
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Man in Spain Declared Dead; Then He Snores Before Autopsy originally appeared on usnews.com
