Crash woman is found alive in mortuary fridge

A SOUTH African woman declared dead after a horrific car crash was later found alive in a mortuary fridge.

The unnamed woman had been certified dead by paramedics at the scene of the crash near Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, in the early hours of June 24.

But mortuary technicians found her alive in a morgue fridge several hours after the crash, in which the car rolled, throwing all three occupants clear and killing two of them.

‘We followed our procedures – we’ve got no idea how it happened,’ a spokesman for the ambulance service said.

‘The crew is absolutely devastated – we’re not in the business of declaring living people dead, we’re in the business of keeping people alive.’

The woman, who was taken to Carletonville hospital where her condition has not been released, had shown no signs of life when she was attended to by first responders, the spokesman added.

‘All the right checks were done – breathing, pulse – so the patient was declared deceased.’ An investigation has been launched. ‘Paramedics are trained to determine death, not us,’ a source at the Carletonville mortuary said. ‘You never expect to open a fridge and find someone in there alive.

‘Can you imagine if we had begun the autopsy and killed her?’

The woman’s family said they were in shock, adding: ‘We need answers – that’s all we want.’