Half-Ton Mexican Man Dies After Pleading For Help

Man had gone on TV to ask nation for assistance in solving his weight problem

By the Associated Press

Posted Oct 8, 2008 2:25 AM CDT

(AP) – A bedridden 990-pound man who had appealed on Mexican television for help tackling his weight problem has died of heart failure, AP reports. Emergency officials had to knock down Jose Luis Garza's bedroom wall and hoist him onto the back of a friend's pickup truck to take him to the hospital. The 47-year-old man was pronounced dead on arrival, and was buried yesterday.

Garza had followed in the footsteps of the world's fattest man, fellow Mexican Manuel Uribe, by taking his weight problem public. Garza said he had always struggled with his weight but fell into a cycle of depression and overeating nine months ago after his parents died of natural causes within two weeks of each other. He was bedridden for four months.

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Jose Luis Garza lies at home in Monterrey, Mexico, last week. (Monica Rueda)

Cemetery workers take a break after digging the oversized grave for Jose Luis Garza. (AP Photo/Monica Rueda)

Jose Luis Garza, 47, lies on his bed in the town of Juarez, near Monterrey, Mexico, last week. (AP Photo/Monica Rueda)

Friends, relatives and cemetery workers lower the coffin of Jose Luis Garza, 47, in Monterrey, Mexico, yesterday. (Monica Rueda)

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The attention he would have received at a hospital would have been the same he received at home. Moving a patient of that magnitude is very difficult. - Julio Cesar Cano, spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state health department.

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Half-Ton Mexican Man Dies After Pleading For Help