15-year-old girl wakes up inside coffin at her wake after family believes she is dead for nearly 8 hours

Her father believed she had died after he could no longer detect breathing or a pulse while taking her for medical attention.

Guatemala’s authorities opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident.

In a video making the rounds online, Yuleidy Ixcotoyac, a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl, had been presumed dead by her family after collapsing while her father was taking her to a hospital in Guatemala.

Relatives had arranged a wake and placed her inside a coffin, ready to say goodbye to her forever.

But about eight hours after her family thought she had died, Yuleidy reportedly began moving inside the coffin and then suddenly sat up.

Her mother, Lesvia Ríos, was among the first to notice the movement. In an interview with local broadcaster TV SAC, she recalled how she had been crying over the coffin when the family opened a small viewing window in its lid.

“She was moving, she was waking up, and suddenly she sat up,” Ríos said.

The incident happened on Saturday, October 10, in El Jocote, a village in the municipality of Sacapulas, in Guatemala’s Quiché department. It has since prompted an official investigation into how the teenager came to be presumed dead without being examined by a doctor.

A 15-year-old girl in Guatemala woke up inside her own coffin after her family believed she was dead for nearly 8 hours. No doctor had ever declared her dead. Her father made that call himself after she lost consciousness. https://t.co/YIhjhLRG9v

According to her father, Abraham Ixcotoyac Tojín, Yuleidy began feeling unwell during the early hours of Saturday. She later lost consciousness; he put her in his car and headed towards a hospital.

However, while travelling near San Pedro Jocopilas, in Quiché, he became convinced that his daughter had died simply because he “…saw that she was no longer breathing; there was no pulse in her arms.” He told TV SAC, “I parked my car and went over to her, and I saw her condition; she had simply ceased to exist. She passed away on the way.” 

Ixcotoyac said since he saw that she had no signs of life, he abandoned the journey to the hospital, got a coffin and returned home with her.

The father, who is an evangelical pastor in the local community, explained that he believed he had received a divine revelation after thinking his daughter had died.

There was no medical examination confirming her death and no death certificate establishing that she had died. Instead, the family relied on what her father believed he had observed while checking her breathing and pulse.

By the time they returned to El Jocote, relatives, neighbours and members of the family’s church had gathered for the wake. The coffin was taken to a prepared area where mourners could pay their respects.

The family had no reason, based on what they believed at the time, to expect the teenager to sit up in the middle of the gathering.

Ixcotoyac said he was in the courtyard when he heard people shouting that a miracle had occurred. He went to investigate and found that his daughter was being lifted out of the coffin.

For a family that had spent hours believing it had lost a child, the moment was an extraordinary reversal.

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Although Yuleidy’s father believed she had died, her mother said she had struggled to accept that her daughter was gone.

Yuleidy's parents recount their experiences. Ríos recalled that she continued to hope the teenager was alive, even as relatives prepared for the wake.

“I kept saying that she was alive, that she was not dead,” she said during the interview.

The teenager also spoke about what she remembered before losing consciousness. She said she experienced severe pain in her chest, describing a sensation of heaviness before she fainted.

“My heart started hurting a lot, it felt heavy, and then I kind of fainted,” Yuleidy said.

She explained that her father later told her what had happened while he was driving her to the hospital.

The authorities have not publicly established that a crime occurred or announced a finding of negligence in the reports reviewed.

Yuleidy was taken for medical evaluation after the incident. Her family said she was conscious and recovering, while examinations were expected to help doctors determine what had caused her collapse.