Man Dies Who Woke Up Alive in Body Bag Recently After Being Declared Dead

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 13, 2014   |   12:23PM   |   Jackson, MS

78-year-old Walter Williams was alive, then dead, then alive and now reportedly has actually passed away. Williams is the man who made national news when doctors pronounced him clinically dead and he woke up alive in a body bag in a funeral home.

Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard called it a miracle that 78-year-old Walter Williams was alive. The coroner was called to Williams’ home in Lexington, a community north of Jackson, where family members believed he had died. Howard said Williams had no pulse and was pronounced dead.

bodybagLater, workers at Porter and Sons Funeral Home were preparing to embalm Williams when he started to kick in the body bag. Family members were called and Williams was taken to a hospital. Howard says he believes Williams’ pacemaker stopped working, then started again.

Now, new reports indicate Williams has actully died. From a local news station:

Howard confirmed Thursday morning that Williams died around 1 a.m.

“I think the family is taking it pretty well,” Howard said.

Williams’ family knew his time was coming, but they said at the time of his near-death experience that they were just glad to get to be with him for whatever time he had left.

“He’s got very strong faith, and he instilled it in us all. That’s how we know it’s the Lord that brought him back, and not just man,” his daughter, Mary Williams, said. “Man might have said, ‘This is your time,’ but it’s up to the Lord to tell us when. It’s not our time; it’s the Lord’s time.”

The father of 11, grandfather of 15, and great-grandfather of six had gone into hospice because of congestive heart failure about a week before. He was declared dead by a coroner the first time in the early hours of the morning on Feb. 27 when neither the coroner or others, including nurses, could find a pulse.

Williams told family members, when they asked him what his experience was like, that he thought he had just gone into a deep sleep.

LifeNews reported earlier this month about a man who doctors pronounced clinically dead came back to life 45 minutes after his death had been called.

This is also a cautionary tale for patients who are organ donors, where doctors may too quickly began cutting up patients who are not really dead to begin harvesting their organs for donations. These kinds of cases have happened before, as supposedly “brain dead” patients have come back to life just before having their vital organs taken from them after prematurely being declared dead.