By Stevie Smith Nov 30, 2007, 10:07 GMT
Following on from the story of a 33-year-old quarry worker believed to have been killed by an exploding mobile phone battery in South Korea this week, authorities working on a subsequent probe into the tragic incident have revealed that fatally faulty technology was not to blame.
Korean co-worker confesses to accidental killing of a 33-year-old man thought to have died following a mobile phone explosion. Credit: Sydney Morning Herald.
More specifically, police in the region (located just south of Seoul) are reporting that the victim, who’s surname has been confirmed as Seo, was accidentally killed by 58-year-old co-worker Kwon Young-sup, with the older man striking Seo while reversing a piece of heavy excavation equipment.
Kwon, who initially claimed to have found Seo bleeding around the nose and with the charred remains of a mobile phone scorched through his shirt pocket, has since come forward to confess killing his colleague.
"I was moving the excavator and Seo was suddenly out of my sight. I ran out and saw he was lying down bleeding and his clothes on fire," Kwon was quoted as saying by the police in The Korean Times. "All this happened in a moment, and I was too afraid about the accident. So I lied that the battery exploded and killed Seo."
Doctor Kim Hoon, who initially examined the body, offered that the victim’s injuries indicated that the mobile phone in his shirt pocket had exploded, burning his chest, breaking his ribs and spine, and also sending fatal fragments into his heart and lungs.
However, a coroner from the country’s leading forensic investigation bureau has since disputed that conclusion, outlining to the Yonhap News Agency that: "It is true that his chest was burnt, but the internal damage is too dispersed to be caused by a phone explosion."
With a Chinese steel mill worker killed by a mobile phone explosion during the summer, this latest news story filtered across the Net with considerable speed, leading LG Electronics, the suspect phone’s manufacturer, to insist that "unlike lithium-ion batteries," the lithium-polymer batteries used in its phone handets "cannot suddenly explode."
It remains to be confirmed exactly why the impact of the excavator would have caused the LG handset in Seo’s shirt pocket to catch fire.
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