{"id":393391,"date":"2026-01-07T16:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393391\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T16:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:16:07","slug":"detroit-suburb-agrees-to-3-25m-settlement-in-case-of-woman-found-alive-in-body-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393391\/","title":{"rendered":"Detroit suburb agrees to $3.25M settlement in case of woman found alive in body bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Detroit suburb has agreed to a $3.25 million settlement with the family of a young woman who had been declared dead at home but then gasped for air and opened her eyes when her body bag was unzipped<\/a> at a funeral home.<\/p>\n

Southfield paramedics were accused of gross negligence in how they responded to Timesha Beauchamp after a 911 call in 2020. The 20-year-old, who had cerebral palsy, was eventually rushed to a hospital and died two months later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize that no resolution can undo the profound tragedy that occurred on August 23, 2020, or ease the pain experienced by Ms. Beauchamp\u2019s family,” Southfield said in a statement. \u201cThis case involved extraordinarily difficult circumstances that arose in the complex world of a global pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beauchamp was struggling to breathe when her family called 911. A medical crew tried to resuscitate her and also consulted a doctor, who declared her dead over the phone without going to the home.<\/p>\n

Later that day, a funeral home opened the body bag and found Beauchamp gasping for air. She was swiftly taken to a hospital but never recovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was put in a situation she never should have been in,” Steven Hurbis, an attorney for Beauchamp\u2019s family, said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Medical professionals, he added, said Beauchamp would have survived if she had been taken immediately to a hospital from her home.<\/p>\n

Southfield fought the lawsuit and persuaded a judge to dismiss it based on governmental immunity. The Michigan Court of Appeals, however, overturned that decision<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

The Southfield fire chief had said Beauchamp’s situation might have been a case of \u201cLazarus syndrome,\u201d a reference to people who come back to life without assistance after attempts to resuscitate have failed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Detroit suburb has agreed to a $3.25 million settlement with the family of a young woman who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[190608,23,966,50232,793,3,2031,795,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-393391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-190608","tag-america","tag-article","tag-cerebral-palsy","tag-general-news","tag-news","tag-oddities","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}