Mourners at the wake of an elderly Ecuadorean woman were startled to discover she was still alive.
She was placed in a coffin and taken to a funeral parlour, where relatives held a vigil before her planned burial.
“My mum started to move her left hand, to open her eyes, her mouth; she struggled to breathe,” her son Gilbert Balberán described the moment he realised his mother was still alive.
Video taken by one of the mourners shows her lying in an open casket struggling to breathe, while another complains that an ambulance they called has not yet arrived.
Minutes later, firefighters arrive and lift Bella Montoya from the coffin onto a stretcher and take her back to the same hospital where she had been declared dead.
Her son told Ecuadorean media that she was in intensive care, but was responsive.
Ecuador’s health ministry has set up a committee to investigate the incident.
Mr Balberán said he had taken his mother to hospital at about 09:00 “and at noon a doctor told me [she] died”.
Bella Montoya is not the only person to “come alive” after being officially declared dead.