A 'dead' teenager woke up in her coffin and screamed for help one day after she was buried – but died again before desperate relatives could save her. Grieving family members pictured above breaking through the concrete tomb from where Neysi Perez, 16, had been heard 'banging and screaming'.
Relatives who removed the girl's corpse found that the glass viewing window on her coffin had been smashed and the tips of her fingers were bruised. But despite efforts to revive her medics found no signs of life and she was later returned to the cemetery and reburied in the same mausoleum.
Ms Perez, who was three months pregnant, reportedly fell unconscious after waking up in the night to use the outside toilet at her home in La Entrada, western Honduras.
It was believed she may have collapsed in an apparent panic attack after hearing a burst of gunfire.
But when the teenager started foaming at the mouth her religious parents called the local priest believing she had become possessed by an evil spirit. Relatives told how the priest tried to exorcise her, but she later became lifeless and was rushed to hospital, where three hours later doctors declared her dead.
Mr Gozales told local TV news Primer Impacto: 'I was heartbroken because my sweetheart had been taken so suddenly from me. I wanted to be near to her.
'As I put my hand on her grave I could hear noises inside. I heard banging, then I heard her voice. She was screaming for help.
'It had already been a day since we buried her. I couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic, full of hope.'
Cemetery worker Jesus Villanueva said he had also heard noises coming from the grave.
He said: 'I convinced myself that the screams were coming from somewhere else. I never imagined that there was someone alive in there.
'That afternoon the girl's husband came to me begging me to get her out because she was alive.
'He was hysterical. The family were soon here and started breaking through the tomb, shouting her name.'
Ms Perez was taken by truck to the nearest hospital in San Pedro Sula, where she was carried in still inside her coffin.
But although medics tried to revive her, all the tests they carried out showed that she was clinically dead.
Doctor Claudia Lopez recalled: 'The whole family rushed in, almost breaking the door down, carrying the girl in her casket.