Woman Found Breathing at Funeral Home Hours After Being Declared Dead at Nursing Center

A woman was pronounced dead at a New York nursing facility, only to be found breathing hours later at a funeral home.

The widely headlined incident, per a local report from WNBC, involved an 82-year-old woman who had been declared dead at the Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center at Port Jefferson on Long Island on Saturday morning. Several hours later, following the woman’s transportation to O.B. Davis Funeral Home in Miller Place, the woman was discovered to actually be alive.

When reached for comment by Complex on Tuesday, a representative from the Suffolk County Police Department confirmed that its detectives were actively “investigating the circumstances” surrounding the objectively bizarre incident. According to the rep, the woman—whose name has not been publicly disclosed—was first pronounced dead at the nursing facility at 11:15 a.m. local time. At 1:30 p.m., she taken to the funeral home. Less than an hour later, she was discovered breathing and has since been transported to a local hospital.

Per police, the incident has now been referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

Complex has also reached out to reps for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center at Port Jefferson on Long Island, and O.B. Davis Funeral Home in Miller Place for additional comment. This story may be updated.

As readers will recall, this somehow isn’t the first incident of this variety to have occurred in recent weeks. As previously reported, a hospice facility in Iowa was fined $10,000 after a 66-year-old woman was incorrectly pronounced dead and later discovered “gasping for air” in a body bag back in January.