Prompted by instinctive unease, Mohd Zahrin’s mother returned home at lunchtime during her factory shift to see him. She found the 16-year-old lying as she left him in the morning. When she moved closer, she found his body unresponsive and cold, but with no sign of injury or disease other than bleeding from his left ear, still wearing an earphone.
The coroner found that the Malaysian teenager had died of electrocution on Dec. 3, according to local media reports.
He is thought to have been shocked through the earbuds plugged into his phone while it charged.Graphic photographs circulated locally on social media are claimed to show blood coming from Zahrin’s ear, which appears to be blackened. In one image, an earphone bud is blackened on one side.
His mother had assumed he was sleeping when she saw her son lying on the floor earlier in the morning and had left for work. But, feeling uneasy, she returned home at lunch, thinking she might cook for him, to find him still lying there.“She then tried to wake him up and as she touched him, the boy’s body felt cold,” Salam District police chief Deputy Superintendent Anuar Salam told The New Straits Times.
There was no sign of injury other than bleeding from his left ear. “The victim was wearing an ‘earphone’ and his adjacent cellphone was charging,” Salam said.A medical officer who was rushed to the home said that Mohd had died that morning. The coroner later confirmed that the Malaysian teenager had died of electrocution.
