According to local reports, the woman, who has not been identified, was at a cemetery in Sao Paulo's Ferraz de Vasconcelos when she heard some odd noises and saw some dirt moving near a grave. That's when she spotted a man, buried alive, trying to pull himself from the ground.
"I was terrified to see a man who I thought was dead, trying to get out of the grave," the woman recalled later, according to local reports.
The woman notified authorities, and emergency services arrived to dig out the rest of the man's body; he had already managed to free his head and arms from the ground. In a video broadcast on local station Record TV, the rescue team is seen pulling the partially buried man from the grave.
It's not immediately clear how the man, who reportedly worked as a city hall employee, came to be buried alive, but it is believed he got into a fight in another part of the city and was badly beaten up in the altercation, the Daily Mail reported.
After he was rescued from the grave, he was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Though city officials confirmed the case, they did not disclose the condition of the man, Noticias R7 reports.