A 15-year-old girl in Guatemala reportedly regained consciousness inside a coffin during her own funeral after her family believed she had died. No doctor had declared Yuleidy Ixcotoyac dead, according to reports.
Ixcotoyac reportedly fell ill early Saturday while her father, Abraham Ixcotoyac, was driving her to a medical center. The evangelical pastor later told local media that he believed she had stopped breathing and no longer had a pulse. Because he believed that his daughter had died, he turned the car around and went back home, PerthNow reported.
“She had simply ceased to exist; she died on the way,” the father told local media, according to The Sun. “I saw that she was no longer breathing and I couldn’t feel her pulse on her wrists. It was a very difficult situation for me. She did not go to hospital.”
The teenager had not received a medical evaluation, and no official death certificate was issued, according to reports. Her family purchased a coffin and gathered loved ones at their rural home in the village of El Jocote just hours later, Infobae Guatemala reported.
During the funeral, Ixcotoyac’s mother reportedly noticed movement inside the coffin. According to the family’s account, roughly eight hours after she fell ill, the teenager opened her eyes, sat up, and began speaking. Video circulating online appears to show her sitting up as people gather around the coffin as grief turned into relief and celebration.
“I kept saying she was alive; she wasn’t dead,” the mother told local media, according to the New York Post. “When I was crying on top of her casket, we opened the window, and she was moving, she was waking up, and suddenly she sat up.”
Ixcotoyac later said she remembered experiencing severe chest pain before losing consciousness. She thanked God for being alive, Spanish newspaper MARCA reported.
Infobae reported that no public medical assessment explaining the episode was available at the time of its report.
