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"He was not dead, long story short," funeral director Byron
Porter told local TV station WAPT.
The man, 78-year-old Walter Williams, had been pronounced dead
on Wednesday after the coroner arrived at his home in Lexington
and found no pulse. Williams was then taken to the funeral home.
"I stood there and watched them put him in a body bag and zip it
up," Williams' nephew, Eddie Hester, told the broadcaster.
But at the funeral home, Williams began to breathe and kick,
Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard said in an interview. Howard
said Williams has a defibrillator that may have fired up his
heart again.
Paramedics picked Williams up from the funeral home and took him
to an area hospital, where he has been receiving treatment.
His daughter said that Williams, who was nicknamed "Snowball"
because he was born during a rare Mississippi snowstorm, was in
stable condition on Friday and had been talking with family
members.
"He said he thought he was asleep," Mary Williams said of her
father's account of what happened. "Then he woke up in the
hospital. He doesn't remember any of it, really."
(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Scott
Malone, Bernadette Baum and Bernard Orr)
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