‘She had simply ceased to exist, she died on the way’: A 15-year-old was declared dead by her father, then sat up in her coffin at her funeral

A teenage girl in rural Guatemala sat up in the casket during her own wake, according to The New York Post. Her father had declared her dead hours earlier while driving her toward medical care. Video from the service spread online and shows people packed around the wooden coffin.

The girl was 15 when she reportedly lost consciousness early Saturday. Her father, evangelical pastor Abraham Ixcotoyac, pulled the car over and checked for a pulse and breathing. He claims he found neither and concluded his daughter, Yuleidy, had died. “She had simply ceased to exist, she died on the way,” he said.

The father described the checks he made before reaching that conclusion. “I saw that she was no longer breathing and I couldn’t feel her pulse on her wrists. It was a very difficult situation for me. She did not go to hospital.” No doctor confirmed the death, and nobody issued a death certificate. The family bought a coffin and began planning the funeral.

A funeral within hours

Quick burials after a death are customary in Guatemala, and the family followed that tradition. The wake took place on Saturday, Oct. 10, and mourners gathered at the house in El Jocote around 2:30 p.m. That was roughly eight hours after the father concluded she had died. El Jocote is a village in the Sacapulas municipality of the Quiché department. The newspaper Prensa Libre later cited the father’s interview with local broadcaster TV SAC, according to IBTimes UK.

Her mother, Lesvia Ríos, was weeping over the casket when she saw faint movement inside. “I kept saying she was alive; she wasn’t dead,” she told local media. She said relatives then opened the coffin window and saw her daughter stirring: “When I was crying on top of her casket, we opened the window and she was moving, she was waking up and suddenly she sat up.”

Relatives had gathered to say goodbye, so they could hardly believe it until the girl started talking. They helped her out of the casket and handed her water. Surprises inside a casket are rare, even after families have found a stranger in a casket at a viewing, so the movement caught the mourners off guard.

Yuleidy recounted the moments before she passed out. “My heart started hurting really badly, it felt heavy and then I blacked out, like I fainted,” she said. She also told the station that she saw only darkness and wanted to find light, according to a Vistazo report.

The footage has since circulated widely beyond the village. Yuleidy is now conscious and recuperating at her house. She says she “thanks God” for being alive. Health officials in Guatemala have yet to comment publicly on the case.