He may have been seeing the zippedy do dots you get when a person dies far away from you (slow updates like 1 per minute), and respawns close to you. Because he spawns closer to you (lets say 10 updates per minute range), the server tells you person X is here, and your front end 'zipps' the player from one point to the other because of smoothing code, before you ever get the 'he died and isnt on the map anymore' message.
Its happens once in a while, you see a dot go zooming byat 2000 mph.
******** what we DO need is god mode in the film viewer !