“This is a very unusual case,” he said. “I’ve been in this business for 31 years and this is the first time I’ve seen something like this happen.”
Houchin said her family has been notified.
Glantz had been receiving hospice care at a nursing home in Waverly, just outside Lincoln, Houchin said, adding that coroner’s investigations are not conducted “when a patient is expected to die.”
A doctor at the Waverly nursing home had examined Glantz “for the past seven days” and was prepared to sign the death certificate, Houchin said. The investigation into the incident is ongoing, but there is nothing suspicious about the circumstances, he added.
The nursing home and funeral home did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Though rare, there have been several recent incidents involving people who were mistakenly declared dead. Last year in Iowa, a woman who was presumed dead and placed in a body bag later woke up at a funeral home. A hospice facility was fined $10,000 for mistakenly declaring someone dead. In 2022, two Denver firefighters were reprimanded for failing to check on a woman who officers had declared dead, when in fact she was still alive.
Last year, mourners in Ecuador were shocked when they discovered a woman knocking from inside her coffin, hours after she had been declared dead.
In one case, a 66-year-old Florida man was found breathing more than 20 minutes after doctors had declared him dead — his daughter told The Washington Post that doctors made the initial determination without conducting proper tests.
In Nebraska, funeral home staff in Lincoln discovered Glanz alive when they found him breathing after he was placed on a table and immediately called 911, Houchin said.
“The care home and all the parties involved will be investigating what happened and will look at whether new procedures need to be put in place or whether all of the procedures were followed,” Houchin said.
