Yuleidy Ixcotoyac, 15, sat up in her coffin during her own wake on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in El Jocote, a village in the municipality of Sacapulas, in the department of Quiché.
Guatemala’s Procuraduría General de la Nación is examining whether the girl’s parents were negligent.
Lucrecia Prera, the agency’s deputy prosecutor for children and adolescents, said holding a wake without scientific confirmation of death can amount to neglect. She spoke on the Emisoras Unidas program “A Primera Hora.”
The agency could file a criminal complaint if it finds irregularities by the parents. As of Oct. 16, no one has been charged.
The child-protection agency’s team found the family at a private clinic near Huehuetenango, which did not have the equipment for the tests Yuleidy needed. A judge granted protective measures and ordered her moved to the Hospital Regional de Huehuetenango.
Her father said she is stable and the family is waiting for results. Yuleidy remains under observation while the child-protection agency waits for her test results, and no medical authority has explained what happened to her.
No Doctor, No Death Certificate
Yuleidy felt severe pain in her chest in the early hours of Oct. 10 and lost consciousness. Her father, Abraham Ixcotoyac, an evangelical pastor, drove her in his vehicle toward a medical center.
He pulled over as he neared the municipality of San Pedro Jocopilas and checked her. “She was no longer breathing, and I couldn’t feel her pulse on her wrists,” he said.
No doctor examined her. She never entered a hospital or a health center, and no one issued a death certificate.
Her father drove instead to a funeral home, bought a coffin and carried her body back to the house in El Jocote. Relatives, neighbors and members of his congregation had already gathered there. The family gave the Guatemalan custom of burying a loved one soon after death as the reason for buying the casket immediately, and set the wake for 2:30 p.m. the same day.
Shouts of “Hallelujah” at the Wake
Mourners pressed around the wooden casket in the yard of the family home. Her mother, Lesvia Ríos, said she refused to accept that her daughter was gone.
The family opened the small viewing window set into the lid while the mother wept over the casket, and saw movement inside. The teenager, in a pink T-shirt, sat up in the box and started to speak.
Stunned relatives lifted her out and handed her a cup of water. Loved ones shouted “hallelujah” as the video rolled.
Ixcotoyac told the local channel TV Sac he was in the patio when the shouting broke out, and that his daughter was already being pulled from the coffin by the time he reached it. The footage spread on social media far beyond the Guatemalan highlands.
Accounts place her awakening between seven and eight hours after the family considered her dead.
Prosecutors Question a Missing Certificate
Guatemala’s Public Ministry said prosecutors in Sacapulas, with the regional prosecutor’s office, opened an investigation on Sunday, Oct. 11. They are looking at how relatives came to consider the teenager dead without a medical death certificate.
Some reports said the girl was declared dead at a hospital. Her father is emphatic that she never entered one.
There is no official confirmation that her death was certified through a documented clinical evaluation. That means the episode cannot accurately be described as a medically verified resurrection.
A deep loss of consciousness and other conditions can be mistaken for death, and a professional assessment is required. Without verifiable clinical data, the cause of what happened to Yuleidy cannot be established.
Her father said he took her home instead of to a hospital because God had given him a revelation. He said he committed no crime.
Darkness, Then a Search for Light
Yuleidy is conscious. She told local media that she was given oxygen afterward and that her hands were still trembling.
“My heart started hurting really badly, it felt heavy and then I blacked out, like I fainted,” she said, describing the minutes before she blacked out.
She told TV Sac she saw only darkness and searched for light before she woke inside the coffin. She called her survival a miracle and thanked God for being alive.
Both parents have publicly attributed their daughter’s awakening to a miracle rather than to a mistake. Online reaction is far more divided: some viewers called the footage miraculous, others said the girl was left traumatized, and still others called the entire account a religious fabrication.
The case has reopened conversation in the region about the importance of professional verification in any medical emergency.
