Narrating the ugly incident to the reporter at their two-room apartment in the area, Mama Chibuzor, who could not control her emotions, said: “Junior had assisted me in cooking some rice for sale in my stand at Okesa market before I left home. But it was hardly two hours after I left that someone came running to me that Junior had been electrocuted. I immediately rushed to the scene and met people making frantic efforts to rescue him.
“We eventually removed the earpiece from his ears, unplugged the handset from the power socket and rushed him to the hospital. But he died just as we were about stepping into the hospital.
“I was told that Junior plucked the handset, which he also connected to the earpiece, into the power socket so as to charge the phone. He was also using the earpiece connected to the phone to listen to some music on the phone.
“Some people said he slept off while listening to the music on the phone and charging the phone at the same time. They said it was while doing that he suddenly shouted for help, and when people rushed to him, he was already gasping for air.”
Mama Chibuzor further said his son would have lived had he got help on time. She said: “If there had been elderly people around, apart from his elder brother who wasn’t clever enough to devise a better means of saving Junior, my son might have survived the electrocution.”
She said she couldn’t say if Junior had been in the habit of listening to music on the cell phone while charging it. “I only know that he was an obedient boy who didn’t get into trouble with anyone. He was also very dutiful; he never got tired of running errands in the house at anytime. Only God understands why this happened to him,” she lamented.
Junior was buried three days after his death. According to his mum, all his clothes, pictures, shoes and other things that could bring back some emotional memories had been removed by the family.
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