Death By iPhone: Woman Electrocuted While Taking A Bath

Bathtubs and electronic devices, such as the iPhone, don’t mix, and a Russian woman paid the ultimate price to learn that lesson. Opposing Views reports that 24-year-old Evgenia Sviridenko died tragically in an accident involving the device while she was taking a bath. The Russian woman was reportedly charging her phone in the bathroom while she was in the tub, but she decided to play on the Russian version of Facebook — VKontakte — while she relaxed in the water. That was a big mistake, which she soon found out.

It’s not being reported how long she was dead before she’d been discovered, but her flatmate reportedly found her after she’d been in the bathroom long enough to be of concern. After her roommate became worried, she opened the bathroom door to find Evgenia dead in the tub. The phone was in the tub with her, while it was still charging on its cable. Opposing Views reports that she was pale, but was still shaking from the electricity that coursed through the filled tub via the charging iPhone.

The Mirror reports that this is not the first death of a young person associated with electronics and water. An 18-year-old Korean girl named Wu Wyuan was found dead by her sister after she’d reportedly tried to use her phone while taking a shower at the same time. Also, in October, a man named Phillip Lechter’s iPhone 6 caught fire while in his pants pocket, leaving him with a second degree burn — though fortunately alive, unlike the previous examples.

Other deaths associated with the iPhone have inspired claims that fake chargers and other issues are at the fault of the users have caused fatal malfunctions. A student was using a third-party charger in one incident, which caused the phone to electrocute the user to death. A 2013 report on Yahoo News indicates that iPhone related deaths — especially by electrocution — are incredibly low, statistically.

Nonetheless, there are many factors that could cause an iPhone to electrocute or burn a user, resulting in serious injury or even death. Faulty wiring in a home is one of those causes, and so is the use of third-party chargers, which are often cheap and bought as replacements when original chargers are lost. Ironically, the 2013 news report warns against using the phones while in the bath — advice that Evgenia Sviridenko would have been better off reading before she lost her life in such a preventable manner.

[Photo credit: Leggo]