South African crash victim found alive after two days in mortuary fridge when his stunned family came to ID him

A MAN declared dead after being hit by a car spent nearly two days in a mortuary fridge in South Africa before staff discovered that he was still alive.

Msizi Mkhize, 28, was walking home with a friend when he was hit in Kwa-Mashu, a township north of the coastal city of Durban, last week.

He was declared dead at the scene of the accident before being taken to the Phoenix mortuary, where his body was placed in a fridge.

“When his family arrived for identification purposes a pulse was found in the patient by mortuary staff, who then immediately transported him to Mahatma Gandhi hospital for resuscitation,” Imran Keeka, a provincial official for the opposition Democratic Alliance party, said yesterday.

Msizi was resuscitated by nurses – but tragically died five hours later.

His irate family are now demanding answers.

Dad Peter Mkhize said: “I have no words to express how I feel about what happened to my child.

“To spend the entire night and morning in the mortuary refrigerator is wrong.”

The distraught dad described the rollercoaster of emotions that began with him arriving at the morgue at 8am to identify his son’s body.

He told how he was informed some four hours later that his son was in fact alive – only for him to once again be declared dead five hours after that.