Prepared for autopsy, he woke up just before they carved him up. An inmate had been pronounced deceased after being found unconscious and was even placed in cold storage.
He appeared to be dead for all intents and purposes, but he wasn’t. A man, an inmate in a Spanish penitentiary, was pronounced dead by three doctors, but woke up just before an autopsy. The case dates back to 2018 and was reported by the newspaper El Espanol. The then 29-year-old Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez had been found unconscious in his cell and had been transferred to a hospital morgue in a body bag. Then the discovery of the pathologists, just before they started to carve him for the autopsy.
The strange case of the prisoner wrongly declared dead
Found motionless on a chair in his cell and without signs of violence, the prisoner had been attended by two doctors on duty in the prison who had not detected any vital signs, declaring the man dead. An hour later, the medical examiner had agreed that the 29-year-old was dead. Jiménez had then been placed in cold storage to preserve the body for autopsy. Then his skin had been marked with scalpel guidelines in preparation for the medical inspection to detect the cause of death. At that point, however, doctors began to hear a strange noise, as if someone was snoring, from the bag in which the alleged corpse was enclosed. So the pathologist discovered that, in fact, the prisoner was alive.
The man was then transferred under escort to another hospital that had declared his condition stable and had placed him in intensive care, while the prison authorities were trying to understand what could have generated the misdiagnosis of three doctors. It seems that the day before he was pronounced “dead,” the inmate had complained of feeling ill and officials had said his body showed signs of cyanosis, a purplish discoloration of the skin caused by poor circulation or lack of oxygen.
After some time, experts have speculated that the 29-year-old’s “apparent death” may have been a case of catalepsy, or a situation in which the body enters a trance-like state with a loss of consciousness and sensitivity to the point of physical rigidity. Although the man suffered from epilepsy and was taking medication to keep it under control, it is still unclear what could have triggered the cataleptic state. It took 24 hours at the hospital before the prisoner fully regained consciousness and resumed speaking. The “apparent death” of the prisoner in Spain is still being studied to understand what could have caused it.
About the human body, scientists continue to study how it works. New research on evolution, for example, has identified that climate affects body and brain size.