Kentucky man declared dead and taken for organ removal while still 'thrashing around on the bed' and 'crying'

A man declared dead in a Kentucky hospital was taken into an operating room for organ donation when several hospital staff quickly realized something was amiss.

Natasha Miller told NPR she was preparing the organ preservation for transplantation when nurses wheeled the body in; however, Miller revealed that despite being declared dead, the man looked very much alive.

“He was moving around—kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Miller said in the interview.

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“And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”

The operating room at Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond, Kentucky, was stunned to find him alive, including two doctors who refused to participate in the organ retrieval.

Miller explains that the procuring surgeon immediately stated: ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

“It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.”

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The organ procedure was immediately canceled, but multiple hospital workers later quit over the October 2021 incident.

“That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” exclaimed Nyckoletta Martin, a former organ preservationist for the hospital.

"That's horrifying."