A South African woman who paramedics had declared dead after a horrific car crash was later found alive in a mortuary fridge, emergency services said today.
Ambulance service Distress Alert confirmed that the unnamed woman had been certified dead by paramedics at the scene of the pile-up outside of Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, in the early hours of June 24.
Mortuary technicians then found her alive in a morgue fridge several hours after the crash in which the victims' car rolled, throwing all three occupants clear of the vehicle, killing two of them.
"We followed our procedures -- we've got no idea how it happened," Distress Alert operations manager Gerrit Bradnick told AFP.
"The crew is absolutely devastated -- we're not in the business of declaring living people dead, we're in the business of keeping people alive."