14 DAY TRIAL // The end of the year ended with a freak accident as a seven year old boy was killed by his favorite gaming device. Connor O'Keefe was on holiday in Thailand with his family when he was electrocuted while charging up the Nintendo GameBoy he got for Christmas.
According to his mother, the charger was bought in Thailand, and her son was electrocuted while unplugging his Gameboy, as he did a lot of times before. Kathleen Curry, 45, was the one who found the lifeless body and after recovering from shock she said: "There should be some kind of warning about the different electrical currents you get abroad because this would not have happened in England."
She explained that her boy was aware of electricity hazards and that he did not use the charger while still wet from swimming. All the boy's relatives were devastated, including his godmother who paid tribute to the boy: ""We're just devastated. He loved his holidays and computer games were his passion. He was absolutely brilliant at them." This story features in today's UK tabloid the Mirror as well as on other websites.
Considering that all GameBoy handheld consoles come with numerous safety warnings, detailed customer precautions and instruction booklets, maybe this kind of tragic accidents should not happen anymore. Shoulda, coulda, woulda is not important right now because a young boy lost his life but maybe, just maybe, if his mother was paying a little bit more attention, this tragedy could have been avoided.