Selling of stolen phones has become rampant in China. (Photo : Getty Images)
The mobile phone has claimed another life in China. Wang, a 28-year-old woman in Houyang Village, Wenzhou in Zheijiang Province, tripped and fell into a canal because she was too busy using her cellphone to realize she was walking towards a body of water.
CCTV footage showed the woman struggling in the river for about a minute and then drowned, reports the New York Daily News. According to Yang, the husband of Wang, thought that the victim stayed overnight with a friend which explains why she did not come home to their two children that night.
The next morning, he searched for Wang and found her shoe floating in the river which actually has chest-deep water but nevertheless dangerous, says Zhou Renjun, the police officer handling the case. But Houyang residents say the canal is about five feet deep and is filled with slippery mud.
Caught by surprise, Wang likely slipped when her feet touched the mud and ingested water, causing her to drown and die. She adds to the growing number of pedestrian mobile phone users who have risked their lives by looking at their phones instead of keeping their eyes on the road.
It a story that repeats in different parts of the world. In the U.S., Joshua Burwell fell from Sunset Cliff on Dec. 25 because he was too occupied by his gadget.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, cellphone-related injuries, in a study of emergency room records published in 2013, rose to 1,150 in 2010 from 256 in 2005. A 2015 report on unintentional deaths and injuries by the National Safety Council listed distracted walking for the first time, which accounted for over 11,000 injures in the 11-year period 2000 through 2011.
