Maria de Jesus Arroyo woke up in a morgue freezer and struggled to free herself

Apr 7, 2014 09:25 GMT  ·  By

An 80-year-old grandmother from California was allegedly frozen to death in a hospital morgue after being prematurely declared dead. The family filed a lawsuit against the hospital where the elderly woman died, claiming that she was still alive when she was put into the morgue freezer.

Maria de Jesus Arroyo was pronounced dead by staff at White Memorial Medical Center after suffering a heart attack on July 26, 2010. According to court documents, her body was moved into a morgue freezer at the Boyle Heights hospital, where she woke up and unsuccessfully struggled to free herself.

According to New York Daily News, the woman was found lying face down in a half-unzipped bodybag a few days later, when workers handed over the body to morticians. She had a broken nose and several cuts and bruises to her face that were caused while she was trying to escape, court papers reveal.

Arroyo's family initially sued the medical center for mishandling the body, but a pathologist ruled that the severe injuries must have been suffered while she was still alive, and that she might actually have been “frozen alive.” According to the pathologist's report, she likely “damaged her face and turned herself face down as she struggled unsuccessfully to escape her frozen tomb.”

The family's lawyer Scott Schutzman withdraw the initial lawsuit against the hospital and filed a second case claiming that Dr. John Plosay and the hospital staff mistakenly declared the woman dead and froze her while still alive.

However, a Los Angeles judge dismissed the second suit filed in May 2012, after attorneys for Boyle Heights' White Memorial Hospital argued that it was filed too late, saying that the one-year statute of limitations had long expired for a case.

This week, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned that ruling, saying that the family of the married mother-of-eight could not have suspected that the woman was still alive when she was put into the freezer until the pathologist gave his expert opinion.

“Taking the allegations of the complaint as true, we conclude that it cannot be said as a matter of law that the one-year period began running on or about July 26, 2010, the date of the decedent's death,” the Court of Appeal's decision reads.

So, the family can now proceed with the medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital.

Just a week before her terrible death, Mrs. Arroyo had celebrated her 80th birthday surrounded by her children and grandchildren.