Wife drops phone in cesspool, husband and his mother die trying to get it

TORONTO – A man and his mother died after he tried to retrieve his wife’s cellphone from a cesspool in China last month.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man jumped into an open-pit toilet after his wife dropped her brand new phone in it.

He quickly lost consciousness from the fumes and his mother jumped in to help.

When she fainted, the wife went in and soon all three were lying unconscious in the knee-deep waste.

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The man’s father called for neighbours to help before jumping in and getting stuck himself.

Two neighbours who entered the pit to help also fainted.

“The smell was too strong. I lost consciousness before I could see anything,” a neighbour told the South China Morning Post.

The six people were eventually pulled out of the pit when locals found a rope to use.

Neighbours say that everyone had a pulse when they were pulled out of the pit and that it took over an hour for an ambulance to arrive.

The man and his mother died in hospital.

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A doctor at the hospital told the South China Morning Post that the victims suffocated.

The wife and a neighbour were put in intensive care and the father suffered injuries.

The phone was worth an estimated 2,000-yuan (CDN$348).