Man, his mother killed in septic tank phone search
A man and his mother have been reportedly died trying to retrieve his wife’s new mobile phone from a toilet septic tank in China, reports said Friday, with four other people also entering the septic.
The woman according to a web portal, Dahen, run by Henan provincial government report, dropped her new device — worth 2,000 yuan ($320) — in the open-pit toilet.
Her husband jumped in to try to locate the phone but was overcome by fumes and passed out, it said.
His mother went into the septic to help her son, but fainted herself, prompting the woman and then her father-in-law to enter in turn, the report said.
Two neighbours then followed the family into the septic tank, and were also overcome.
Villagers in Xinxiang, in central China, used ropes to retrieve the six people from the tank, which online images showed to be accessed via a metre-square brick-built hole.
The husband and mother-in-law both died, while the woman remained unconscious and the two neighbours were also ill, the report said.
“In five minutes, two lives have gone and my daughter-in-law is unconscious, leaving a half-paralysed elderly man and a one-year-old grandson,” the husband’s distraught uncle said, according to the web portal.
“How are we supposed to go on?”
The report did not specify whether the phone had been found. (AFP)
