Dead teenager 'wakes up in grave' - only to then 'die in hospital'

Frantic relatives smashed into the concrete tomb of recently buried teen. Photo: Primer Impacto / YouTube

Sixteen-year-old Neysi Perez was buried after doctors pronounced she was dead - but her family insist she was buried alive. Despite their best efforts, the teenager died

A teenage girl in Honduras had mistakenly been buried alive and apparently woke up in her coffin, only to die before she was freed.

Footage shows frantic relatives smashing into the concrete tomb of recently buried Neysi Perez, 16, after they said they heard her screaming from inside. She had been buried the previous day.

When they opened the coffin, Perez was dead. But according to relatives, she was still warm and had bruises on her fingertips. The glass viewing pane on her coffin had been smashed.

"As I put my hand on her grave, I could hear noises inside," her husband, Rudy Gonzales told Primer Impacto TV news. "I heard banging, then I heard her voice. She was screaming for help."

Perez, 16, had been three months pregnant, and apparently fell unconscious when she heard a burst of gunfire near her home in La Entrada, western Honduras.

When she began foaming at the mouth, her parents - who thought she was possessed by an evil spirit - called a local priest who attempted to perform an exorcism.

Perez was rushed to hospital when she became lifeless and was soon pronounced dead by doctors three hours later. She was buried wearing her wedding dress.

Mr Gonzales was visiting his wife's grave 24 hours after her funeral, when he says heard screaming coming from inside the tomb.

By the time relatives and cemetery workers were able to break through the concrete and transport Perez, still in her coffin, to the hospital, it was too late. Medics again pronounced her dead.

Doctors believe that Perez suffered a severe panic attack brought on by the gunfire, which temporarily stopped her heart. They said that it is also possible that she had a cataplexy attack, which is an abrupt loss of voluntary muscle function triggered by extreme stress.

Maria Gutierrez, Perez's mother, believed her daughter was buried alive, and blamed doctors for being too quick in signing a death certificate. "She didn't look like she had died," Ms Gutierrez said.

Perez was later reburied in her original grave.