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Oz driver back from dead?

SYDNEY, Australia - A Melbourne tow-truck driver has described how a car-crash victim was discovered to be alive almost an hour after paramedics had declared him dead.

When the ambulance left the scene State Emergency Service volunteers cut the 30-year-old driver from his wrecked Porsche and laid out his body for collection.

Trevor Oliver said: "The SES got the body out of the car and placed him on the side of the road and wrapped him in plastic. It was when the coroner turned up to pick up the body that he and the SES volunteers noticed that the body was still warm and had a pulse."

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE CASE

The ambulance was called back to the scene of April 1 crash and the driver taken to hospital, where he is in a critical condition.

Steve McGhie from the Ambulance Employees Association said it was not unusual for there to be movement from people who have died.

"There can be still body movements and noises and different things that come from bodies, and so that is possible," he explained. "Paramedics would check the pulse, would check the patient's pupils, they would monitor the patient to see whether there's any heart rhythm."

Ambulance Victoria spokesman Simon Thomson said it had been difficult for the paramedics to work on the driver due to the confines of the wrecked car. He said: "This man was extensively trapped. He was upside down and the roof of the car was against the crash wires on the freeway. In the 13 years I've worked for Ambulance Victoria I've never heard of a case like this.

"We attend more than a half-million cases every year, so obviously it's exceptionally rare," he said.
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