Dead’ Mississippi man who kicked out of body bag has died
A Mississippi man pronounced dead last month and put in a body bag only to come alive just before embalming, has now died, a coroner said on Thursday.
Walter Williams, 78, died at about 1 a.m. local time in Lexington, two weeks after shocking people when he started breathing and kicking at a funeral home where he was taken after being declared dead, said Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard.
“I think he’s gone this time,” Williams’ nephew, Eddie Hester, told a local television station.
This is sooo sad. I wonder how much this poor man was aware of between the time he was wrongly pronounced “dead” and the time he was fighting to get out of that dark body bag.
The brave comments he made re his impending death, must have been made when Hospice originally came on the scene. I have an extraordinary respect for the people who work
in Hospice care, but why didn’t they use a stethoscope instead of simply taking his pulse.
I had a friend a few years back who bewildered her doctor every time she went for a visit. Her doctor could NEVER get her pulse, and even though she was walking and talking he’d always grab the stethoscope and joke “i just want to make sure you’re really alive”.
This happened not too terribly far from my hometown of Memphis and was announced in the local newspaper here. It was interesting to me that the second time that he passed away the same funeral home and the same personnel that responded the first time were once again called to the scene. Obviously they made a correct diagnosis the second time but if I had been a member of the family I do believe that I would have insisted that more qualified technicians be called to the scene. This is a situation where mistakes are simply unacceptable on any level.