Five members of a family of six have been killed by generator fumes in Igboetche community, in the Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State. According to reports, the sad incident happened on Monday August 13th.
Mr Andrew Monye, his wife Onyinye Monye and three of their four children, died in the incident. Monye had turned on the generator when there was power outage and left it in his bathroom before himself and his family retired to their bedroom.
The fumes from the gerenator circulated their home leaving five members of the family dead.
The Children that lost their lives were two girls (15 and 11 years old) and a five-year-old boy, while the only child that survived was 13 years old.
A member of the community who spoke to Punch, said that though the generator was always left outside, the family decided to take it inside the bathroom because of the high rate of stealing in the community.
“They (family members) decided to take the generator in because there is a law that generators should be put off by 11pm. The law came up because of the stealing in the community,” he said
A villager, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “Their (deceased) mouths were foaming and some of them had vomited. It was the surviving child that alerted the house builders opposite their compound that his parents and siblings did not wake up from sleep. They followed him inside the building and found the family dead. They also alerted their neighbours who informed the police about the tragedy. The police took the corpses to a mortuary.”
Confirming the incident, the state police PRO, Nnamdi Omoni, said the corpse of the deceased persons have been deposited in the morgue while investigation into the circumstances that led to their death has commenced.
