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Woman Found Impaled On Spike

Saginaw, Michigan - A woman who spent hours in the company of the dead early today nearly joined them when a failed fence-hop at a Saginaw Township graveyard left her impaled on an iron spike, police said.

The 38-year-old woman was entering surgery at Covenant Medical Center about 7:15 a.m. Her body temperature had plummeted to 84 degrees and the 3-inch spike was inches from a main artery in her groin, police said.

Firefighters needed less than an hour to cut away a 2-square-foot slab of Roselawn Memorial Gardens and Mausoleum's fence along Gratiot just east of Center Road.

They left the spike in her body, the fence section accompanying her into an ambulance, firefighters said.

"If the spike had gone in a couple inches either way, she probably would have bled to death," said Officer William Federspiel. "We were a couple inches away from a fatality."

Dressed in white shorts, shirt and flip-flops, the woman was entering hypothermia when Saginaw Township officers found her at the graveyard, Officer Jason Fromholz said.

A body temperature in the low 90s is dangerous already, firefighters said.

Although she was alert, the woman also was probably in shock and could offer no explanation for her predicament, Federspiel said. Fromholz said it looked like she was trying to leave the cemetery and was jumping out toward Gratiot.

"It was kind of bizarre," Federspiel said.

The spike was an inch or so from her femoral artery, said police and firefighters -- wincing as they described the scene. She had spent up to six hours straddling the 4-foot-high barricade, police estimated.