An elderly Brazilian man who was mistakenly declared dead by paramedics after crashing his motorcycle had a “miracle” rescue thanks to an alert news reporter who filmed him twitching inside the body bag.
The bizarre incident took place on Tuesday morning in the city of Araguaina when street food seller Raimundo da Silva, 71, reportedly began to feel unwell while driving to work.
After da Silva lost consciousness and fell off his vehicle, paramedics were called to the scene. But they pronounced him dead and placed his body in a bag.
They then left the crash site to be supervised by police who waited for the coroner’s arrival. Moments after they left, however, police officers and a journalist covering the accident noticed that the plastic bag was slightly moving on its own.
“When I arrived, the bag was already closed,” reporter Geovanni Pereira told Brazilian news portal G1. In the footage Pereira had filmed, the bag can be seen moving.
“They (the cops) opened it and I saw a small bubble of air coming out of the corner of his mouth. I performed CPR on him for 10 minutes out of a gut instinct to help,” Pereira said.
The paramedics were called back to the scene and da Silva was taken alive by ambulance to a hospital for treatment. No additional updates on his current condition have been disclosed.
However, the paramedics have continued to maintain that they performed CPR on da Silva after they arrived at the accident site.
They said he was pronounced dead “based on technical evaluation.”
They said da Silva’s medical record would be examined to try to understand what happened.
Noting that he was “in the right place at the right time,” Pereira said he thought “it was a miracle.”
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