14 DAY TRIAL // A man in his late 20s was electrocuted to death while clutching his iPhone 4s, in what appears to be an identical case to the one reported in July, involving a stewardess who used a knockoff charger.
The Bangkok Post reports that “A man was found dead after he was apparently electrocuted while using a smartphone in his home in Rayong’s Klaeng district on Monday.”
Klaeng is a district in the eastern part of Rayong Province, eastern Thailand. Local police identified the 28-year-old man as Pisit Charnglek.
The father, Chaleaw Charnglek, said his son usually talked in his sleep, so he didn’t pay much attention to a yell he’d heard shortly after Pisit had gone to sleep around 11pm on Sunday.
The next morning, he found his son dead, clutching his iPhone on his bare chest with severe burn wounds on his hand.
Investigators who arrived at the scene concluded that the man was killed “by an electric shock emitted from the phone charger.”
It is unclear at this point whether the charger used by Pisit Charnglek was a genuine Apple unit or a knockoff.
In a similar case reported just a few months ago, a Chinese woman named Ma Aliun who worked as a flight attendant, died from electric shock from her iPhone 5 while using what Apple subsequently confirmed as being a “knockoff charger.”
Shortly after the incident took place, the Cupertino giant released documentation on its Chinese web site regarding fake chargers, and how customers should pay great attention in picking the right accessories for their iPhones.
Apple then followed with a USB Power Adapter Takeback Program which, to this day, allows users to “acquire properly designed adapters.”
If you have concerns about your USB power adapter, you can drop it off at your local Apple Store (or at an Authorized Service Provider) and buy a genuine Apple charger at a special price.