A woman who was involved in a horrific traffic accident in Peru five weeks ago was declared dead after hospital officials confirmed her vital signs had stopped. This part of the event may not sound strange, but local news sources say that strange events took place after the funeral.
The death of 36-year-old Rosa Isabel Céspedes Callaca was first announced on April 25 in the intensive care unit of Lambayeque Regional Hospital in Peru. He reportedly suffered a severe traumatic brain injury after a high-speed collision threw him head-on from the car.
Since, according to Peruvian law, the deceased had to be buried within three days after death, his family immediately began preparations for the burial on April 26, and the next day he was taken to the cemetery in an open coffin.
However, reportedly, his family realized at the time that something was wrong. “The woman we thought was dead opened her eyes and she was sweating,” said Juan Segundo Cajo, manager of the El Carmen cemetery in Ferreñafe, according to Argentina’s Los Andes newspaper. “At that moment I came to my office and started calling the police.”
Still in his coffin, Callaca was transported to the local hospital. Doctors confirmed that he was showing vital signs, albeit extremely low. An unnamed relative said, “We took him to the hospital and his pulse was measured at five.”
Not surprisingly, the deceased’s family requested an investigation into how this could have happened.
Alipio Rivas Guevara, regional director of health, Rivas Guevara explained, “The case is under investigation. The hospital director has already spoken, he is sending a report on the events that emerged today (April 28).”
But how did this strange event happen?
Surprisingly, there could be several different reasons for this event to occur. Eyelids are known to open after death. Also, dead bodies can move much more than you might imagine, especially after traumatic deaths.
It’s also so customary that at death, hearts stop beating for long periods of time, or in fact, many biological processes continue. It’s not an uncommon situation. As we are learning more than ever now, “dead” is strictly a relative term, and certainly not one we fully understand.
But perhaps the best explanation for Callaca’s apparent resurrection may be the so-called “beating hearts of the dead”. This can happen when the brain dies but the organs continue to function. A 1998 study found about 175 cases where bodies continued to function for more than a week after brain death.
Whatever the cause of the confusion, the story unfortunately does not have a happy ending. The news reports that Callaca was put on a ventilator at the local hospital and his blood oxygen levels were monitored, but he was declared dead for the “second and final time” a few hours later.
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