‘Dead’ woman found to be breathing at Detroit funeral home

A young woman who was declared dead at her suburban Detroit home opened her eyes at a funeral home, just as she was about to be embalmed.

Timesha Beauchamp, 20, who is severely disabled with cerebral palsy, was believed to have suffered a heart attack in Southfield, Michigan.

"They would have begun draining her blood to be very, very frank about it," said Geoffrey Fieger, the family's lawyer.

"They were about to embalm her, which is most frightening, had she not had her eyes open.

"The funeral home unzipping the body bag — literally — that’s what happened to Timesha, and seeing her alive with her eyes open."

Miss Beauchamp is now in hospital and remains on a ventilator.

"She has been disabled since birth, and I believe her relatively fragile condition contributed to the false belief that she was deceased," he said.

"My guess is that that certainly played some role. Perhaps they believed that she was dead, but they were wrong - they were terribly wrong."

Her family have spoken of their horror at the turn of events.

“I’m devastated that my daughter is going through what she’s going through," said Erica Lattimore, Miss Beauchamp's mother.

"Someone pronounced my child dead, and she’s not even dead."

The incident began early on Sunday morning, said Mr Fieger, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday.

He explained that Miss Beauchamp was woken around 7am every morning, and was fed and cleaned.

On Sunday morning the family noticed secretions around her mouth, and that she was not breathing.

The police were called and arrived around 7:30am, with four paramedics on the scene plus Southfield police. Mr Fieger said the paramedics were "made well aware" of her breathing issues, and the usual treatments.

They attempted to save her, but believed they had been unsuccessful, and the funeral home was called at around 9am on Sunday.

She was then placed in a body bag, and lay inside it until the funeral home staff arrived, two and a half hours later, at 11:30am.

The embalmer was the person who opened the body bag, he said.

"Her eyes were open, and she was breathing," he said, adding that the family were alerted that she was arrive around 11:45am.

"The funeral director called the family and was very upset about it."

Mr Fieger said she remained in a critical condition, and was on a respirator, but her heart was beating on its own.

"Not only was she alive, but maybe she was ill to the point that she needed medical treatment - and transportation to the hospital, not a funeral home."

He said no one from the city of Southfield had not yet been in touch with him or the family, and he was unaware whether they were investigating.

Southfield fire department said they consulted an emergency room doctor, who “pronounced the patient deceased based upon medical information provided” from the scene.

The Oakland County medical examiner’s office said the body could be released to the family without an autopsy, according to the fire department.

Yet Miss Beauchamp's godmother Savannah Spears, who is a registered nurse, told the medics that she detected a pulse in her, Mr Fieger said.

"She told her she had seen her moving," he explained.

"They told her the movements were not volitional, and that they were related to the drugs they had given her. They said they did not think she was breathing, and she was dead."

Ms Lattimore said she received a call after the ambulance arrived.

"They said: ‘Ma’am, she’s gone,’ ” she told her local TV station. “I told them, ‘Are you absolutely, 100 per cent sure that she’s gone?’

"They said, ‘Yes, ma’am, she’s gone.’"

Being declared dead and then waking up is not unheard of, but is highly unusual.

In South Africa in 2018, a car crash victim was covered in a sheet and taken to a morgue, where a forensic officer noticed the person was still breathing.

Earlier that same year, a Spanish prisoner was certified dead by three doctors before waking up in a mortuary.