A prisoner in Spain was confirmed to be dead by three different doctors after suffering a stroke in his sleep, a spokesman for the Spanish Prison Service said. This made it all the more shocking when Gonzalo Montoya Jiminez woke up in shock as the pathologist team prepared to perform his autopsy.
- How could something like this happen? How is it possible that three doctors all declared 29-year-old Jiminez dead when he was very much alive? Two of the doctors from Villabona prison confirmed that the man had no vital signs while a third was called from a nearby medical institute and agreed that Jiminez had passed away.
- All normal procedures were followed. As the Spanish Prison Service said in a statement: “Two prison doctors concluded he had clinical signs of death following a morning roll call and informed police, his next-of-kin, and a local duty court as part of standard procedure.” It was revealed that Jiminez had been feeling ill all day before he was thought to have passed away. When doctors found him, his skin had turned purple and he had no pulse.
- This is a very rare case of Catalepsy. Experts from the Institute of Legal Medicine believe Jiminez experienced Catalepsy, though they admit they’ve never seen anything quite like this. Catalepsy is when an individual’s vital signs slow down so much that they’re undetectable.
- When Jiminez woke up, he was terrified. Seeing the pathologists with scalpels ready to cut into him when he opened his eyes, Jiminez was rightly confused and scared. He was taken to Oviedo hospital and put in intensive care due to the long-term apnea he’d experienced.
- Jiminez’s family is furious. They’re “convinced” that only one doctor examined the man’s body and the other two signed off on it without investigating further. However, all three doctors are now subject to an investigation by the Institute of Legal Medicine for malpractice. Experts say this was “an exceptional case of apparent death” but it remains to be seen what conclusions will be drawn.
