'Dead' man wakes up just in time before autopsy

Bringing out the dead is never an easy task, especially when dealing with one very uncooperative "cadaver."

Two Pasay City police officers and several employees of a funeral home went through a hair-raising experience early morning yesterday when a man they thought was lying dead in a street gutter suddenly "returned to life" while about to be transported for autopsy.

SPO1 Hector Bongat and PO1 Roberto Sombregon of the Pasay City Criminal Investigation Unit were in Barangay Tramo shortly after 7 a.m. when they found a man lying on his side with bloodstains on his forehead. They had been dispatched to the area after the station received a call that there was a dead man near the Tramo River.

Within minutes, a van from a Pasay City funeral home arrived to pick up the cadaver.

While being prepared for loading onto a stretcher, the "dead" man suddenly stood up and asked what was happening.

He would, however, fail to elicit any response from those around him as the cops and funeral home employees were still too shocked to comprehend what had just taken place.

There was so much confusion that the police officers even failed to get the man's name.

And after everyone had recovered their wits, the "dead" man simply said he was fine and that he was going home.

One police official, who was amused by the whole affair, said his investigators theorized that their mystery man was drunk and was about to relieve himself near the Tramo River when he slipped and fell.

"His head apparently hit a water pipe and then he lost consciousness," the official said. "We knew he was about to relieve himself because of his unzipped pants."