In Brazil, a woman is believed to have been buried alive by mistake and lay conscious inside her coffin for 11 days before trying to fight her way out of the tomb.
Rosangela Almeida dos Santos, 37, seemed to have desperately tried to escape her wooden casket, which had been nailed shut after she was mistakenly buried.
Unfortunately, Rosangela had already died by the time family members opened the tomb after locals reported hearing screams coming from her grave.
A recorded video showed the commotion in the Senhora Santana cemetery in Riachao das Neves, northeast Brazil, as men took the coffin out of the stone tomb and removed the lid.
Some people can be heard asking to call an ambulance while others touched Rosangela’s feet and commented on how warm she feels.
Rosangela was declared dead by a hospital and was buried the next day.
Locals living near the cemetery alerted her family 11 days after she had been laid to rest after hearing screams and bangs coming from inside the tomb.
According to reports, Rosangela’s body was found turned around and still warm, cotton wool which had been in the woman’s ears and nostrils had come out and she had injuries on her hands and forehead which showed that she had tried to fight her way out.
The nails around the sides of the coffin lid had also been pushed upwards, and there were scratches and blood on the inside, reports said.
Rosangela’s had been at the Hospital do Oeste in Barreiras, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, for a week after being rushed there by her family with fatigue.
According to her death certificate, she suffered two cardiac arrests before dying from ‘septic shock’.
Rosangela reportedly suffered fainting since she was seven years old and took anticonvulsant medicines.
Her family said their goodbyes at a wake held that night, and she was buried in a concrete tomb at the municipal cemetery in her hometown, Riachao das Neves, the next day.
But the locals living on the street next to the cemetery raised the alarm after hearing screams, banging, and groans coming from inside Rosangela’s stone tomb.
Natalina Silva, one of the locals living near the cemetery told Brazil’s G1 website that many people had heard screams during the night.
“When I got there right in front of the tomb, I heard banging from inside it. I thought the kids who play around the cemetery were playing a joke on me,” Silva said. “Then I heard her groan twice, and after those two groans she stopped.”
Germana de Almeida, Rosangela’s mother said that when they took out and opened the coffin they found injuries to her body when she claimed weren’t there when they buried her.
“She had tried to open the lid, even the nails that had been hammered in were loose. Her hands were injured like she had been trying to get out,” her mother said.
“There were than 500 people who came here and packed the cemetery, everybody went to see, lots of people touched her foot and everybody saw that she was still warm. She wasn’t cold,” another local said to Brazil’s Globo TV station.
Rosangela’s family believed that she was mistakenly declared dead and have reported the incident to the police.
“We don’t want to accuse any doctor, we don’t want to cause any problems, but we witnessed that situation, there’s just no way a person can be buried for 11 days and still be warm,” her sister, Isamara Almeida, said.
The police said that they will investigate the incident.
A spokesman for the Hospital de Oeste which declared Rosangela dead has said they ‘will provide all necessary information requested from them to the family and authorities’.