“She’s still alive!”: Grandma (81) declared dead tries to escape from morgue

A bizarre scene has taken place in a Russian morgue. An 81-year-old woman who had been officially declared dead by doctors was found to be alive hours later and even tried to escape from the morgue. “She’s still alive”, her niece was suddenly told in a strange phone call.

Zinaida Kononova (81) was hospitalized in the Kursk area due to intestinal obstruction and had to undergo surgery. According to local media, things went wrong. Doctors pronounced her dead, after which her body was transferred to the morgue.

The next morning, however, the woman declared dead was still alive. An employee found Zinaida Kononova (81) on the floor in the morgue. She had fallen trying to escape from the stretcher she was lying on. “Sit down, grandma, lie down grandma”, it sounded.

Zinaida Kononova was immediately taken to the hospital’s intensive care unit. “She’s still alive”, the hospital had to report in a bizarre phone call to Tatiana Kulikova, a niece of the woman.

Rules not followed

“I was happy that she was still alive, but I didn’t understand how this could happen,” said Tatiana. Later it turned out that doctors had already sent the woman to the morgue after an hour and twenty minutes instead of after two hours as prescribed by the hospital. They may be sanctioned. In any case, the regional government has started an investigation.

Less than a week after the bizarre scene, Zinaida Kononova (81) was still killed. “After a new operation, she felt okay at first, but a little later, she suddenly died anyway,” local media report.

They also complain that physicians in the region do not always have the right devices to diagnose a person’s death, so they have to rely on externally observable factors.