How awful, for everyone involved.
Unfortunately freebirth is often lumped into the same category as homebirth (which of course it is but it's different from having a midwife attended homebirth), so when studies examining the statistics come out saying that homebirth is X number of times more dangerous than hospital birth, freebirth (which to the best of my knowledge is not as safe as a midwife attended homebirth though I could be wrong) tends to increase the number of deaths that fall into the 'homebirth' category.