Another iPhone 4S User Dies Of Electrocution

A 28-year-old man has died from another Apple iPhone charging related death.  This time the incident happened in Thailand. The man was found the next morning by his father, in his hand he was clutching an iPhone 4S.

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Local reports say that the victim had three burn marks left by the his fingers on the edge of the iPhone.  Another mark was found on his chest, leading local investigators to ascertain that he had fallen asleep on top of the phone whilst it was on charge.
The charger probably played a part in the man’s death.  As the charger is not white in colour, we can hazard a guess that this isn’t a genuine Apple charger. Third-party chargers have been implicated in accidents such as this before and they are usually the first thing Apple looks at when trying to determine what happened.

It is also possible that the 30-pin cable was damaged or faulty. If the cable was included with the charger, its quality and therefore reliability could certainly be called into question.  The wiring of the household may also be looked into as improper grounding has been blamed in accidental deaths like this one.  If any part of the wiring involved was grounded improperly, the iPhone would have provided the grounding path, this leaves the unfortunate victim to take the force of the flowing electrical current.

Normally, when an electrical product delivers a shock, a person’s hand will unclench as it’s the natural reaction to do so, but there are certain cases where the person’s grip will fail to relax.  In this particular case, it’s plausible that the sleeping man’s own weight would not allow him to break his grip.
In a similar case approximately four months ago, a Chinese woman was electrocuted and died while answering a call.  Apple said they would investigate that incident also and although their findings are not readily available online, it is hard to imagine the iPhone itself was found to be at fault and there has been no product recall statement issued by Apple, which you would expect in a highly-publicized tragedy such as that one.  The company did, however,  issue a replacement charger program.
It’s highly likely that as in this latest case in Thailand, something other than the iPhone itself was to blame.

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