A grandmother prematurely declared dead woke up in a hospital’s freezer and “struggled unsuccessfully to escape her frozen tomb” before dying, according to Los Angeles court documents.
The horrifying discovery came after Maria de Jesus Arroyo’s body was allegedly presented to her family disfigured with a broken nose and scars on her face so severe a mortuary wasn’t able to mask their appearance.
The 80-year-old married mother of eight had suffered a heart attack on July 26, 2010 when a doctor at Boyle Heights’ White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles declared her dead.
When her mysteriously bruised body was returned to her heart-broken family for her funeral, they assumed it had been abused by hospital staff and contacted an attorney for help.
“I sued for mishandling,” attorney Scott Schutzman told the Daily News.
The hospital in turn, he said, “filed a motion to get out of the case saying there are red fleshy substances [in her wounds] … therefore she must have been alive,” he said of the approximated timing of her injuries.
Schutzman said he immediately consulted his own expert to verify their claims and to his horror, learned that their review concluded the same: “She was placed in the body bag while she was alive,” he said.
