List of Premature Obituaries - P

P

• Valentin Paniagua (former Peruvian president): was reported dead by congressman Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde during a speech being made by Peru's Prime Minister Jorge Del Castillo to the Peruvian Congress in August 2006. 15 minutes later, Paniagua's attending physician announced that the former president had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit but was alive and recovering. He died in October 2006.
• Eduardo Paolozzi: the artist's death was incorrectly reported in a magazine when he suffered a near-fatal stroke in 2001. He died in 2005.
• John Partridge, an astrologer whose death Jonathan Swift (writing under a pseudonym) 'predicted' in a 1708 hoax almanac and later 'confirmed', prompting numerous anti-Partridge newspaper obituaries. (See also Titan Leeds.) He died in either 1714 or 1715.
• Joe Paterno: The former head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team from 1966 to 2011 had been hospitalized in serious condition for complications from lung cancer, a tweet by Pennsylvania State University's student blog Onward State on the evening of January 21, 2012 reported that Paterno had died. This information was picked up by CBS Sports, and other news outlets soon followed, while CBS eventually removed the story after members of the Paterno family denied the reports of Joe's death. Later that night, Onward State's managing editor Devon Edwards officially retracted the story, stating that "In this day and age, getting it first often conflicts with getting it right, but our intention was never to fall into that chasm. All I can do now is promise that in the future, we will exercise caution, restraint, and humility."Devon also announced that he would immediately resign from his position as managing editor for Onward State. Other reports at the time indicated Paterno had been taken off his respirator and given Last Rites, which the Paterno family also denied. Paterno died the next morning.
• Sidney Patrick: an American who was allegedly taken on board a UFO in 1965, he was incorrectly said to be dead by ufologist Timothy Good in his 1996 book Beyond Top Secret. Good corrected the mistake in a subsequent book.
• Natalya Pavlova: this Lithuanian 27-year-old went missing in November 2007, and was declared dead a few weeks later when a body found in a forest was identified by her parents as hers. However, in January 2008 she turned up alive when she was arrested for shoplifting in the city of Klaipėda. It turned out that she had been living there with her boyfriend. It was not known who the dead woman was.
• Vuk Peric: a Serbian pensioner who put his own death notice in the newspaper in 1997 to see who would turn up to his funeral. After watching the funeral from a distance, he revealed himself and thanked everyone for attending.
• Jim Pierce: this resident of Smackover, Arkansas was thought to have died in 1926 when a body identified as his by over 50 people was found in an empty railroad oil tank car. His son took the corpse back to Texas for burial, but was met there by Jim Pierce, very much alive. It was not clear who the dead man was.
• Samy Pillai: a Malaysian man who was certified dead in June 2005 after his wrecked motorcycle was found near an unidentifiable body. In March 2007 it was discovered that he had in fact survived the accident when he was found 300 km away, partly paralysed and unable to speak; his identity was confirmed by thumbprints. It was not known what he had been doing in the intervening two years.
• Harold Pinter: on 13 October 2005 the newsreader on Sky News, apparently relaying information she was having difficulty hearing on her earpiece, announced that the writer had died. (She also mispronounced his name, and described him as a 'play writer'.) She rapidly corrected this to report that in fact he had won the Nobel Prize for literature. Pinter lived until December 2008.
• Perry Pirkanen: see Luca Barbareschi
• Velupillai Prabhakaran: the Tamil Tiger leader was reported by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation as being among the dead or missing in the December 2004 tsunami. This was taken by many to suggest that he was specifically dead. The corporation later retracted the report. He was killed in a battle against Sri Lankan Army troops in May 2009.