Timesha Beauchamp's family has hired an attorney after she was wrongly declared dead and opened her eyes at a funeral home.
The mother of Timesha Beauchamp, the 20-year-old Michigan woman wrongly declared dead but discovered to be still alive by a funeral director about to start the embalming process, says she is devastated by what her daughter endured. "My heart is so heavy. Someone pronounced my child dead, and she's not even dead," Beauchamp's mother, Erica Lattimore, told WDIV-TV.
“My family, her twin brother, her older brother, it’s just, I don’t even have words. I haven’t slept all night. I just don’t know what to do. My heart is so heavy,” the mother said.
Family attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who was hired by the family, identified the woman as Timesha Beauchamp.
"They were about to embalm her, which is most frightening, had she not had her eyes open. The funeral home unzipping the body bag, literally, that's what happened to Timesha, and seeing her alive with her eyes open," Fieger said. "They would have begun draining her blood to be very, very frank about it," he told told WXYZ-TV.
Paramedics were called to the Beauchamp home after Timesha, who has special needs, stopped breathing, her family said. The crew tried to revive the woman for 30 minutes and consulted an emergency room doctor, according to a statement from the local fire department.
"The Southfield Fire and Police Departments followed all appropriate city, county and state protocols and procedures in this case," the department said. It said an investigation was underway and vowed "to provide as much transparency as possible."
