The relatives of a 23-year-old woman from northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have claimed that the woman died after being electrocuted while using her iPhone.
The older sister of victim Ma Ailun said Saturday on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that Ma was electrocuted while trying to answer a call on her iPhone while the device was charging.
Ma Ailun bought the iPhone in December at an official Apple store and was using the original charger to recharge the phone when the incident occurred, her sister said. Ma, who was planning her wedding on August 8, fell to the floor when making a call with her iPhone 5, which was being recharged at the time, Ma’s sister said on her microblog account.
“I want to warn everyone else not to make phone calls when your mobile phone is recharging,” she tweeted.
The sister’s tweet was reposted more than 3,000 times. And the microblogging site was flooded with posts urging fellow users not to make calls while charging their phones.
“I hope that Apple Inc. can give us an explanation,” her post reads.
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Ma’s father, Ma Guanghui, confirmed that his daughter was electrocuted, adding that her body showed signs of electrocution.
Ma, a resident of Xinjiang’s city of Changji, was previously employed as a flight attendant at China Southern Airlines, although she recently quit her job.
Local police confirmed that Ma did die of electrocution, but they have yet to verify if her phone was involved in the incident.
Ma’s sister said via Sina Weibo that she hopes to seek justice from Apple.
Apple said commented on the situation: “We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the … family. We will fully investigate and co-operate with authorities in this matter.”
Local police said they are continuing to investigate the case.
Experts said mobile phones have a low output of only 3 to 5 volts, which isn’t enough to harm the human body.
People will feel an electric shock at about 36 volts. “However, if the charger or the circuit has a problem, such as a broken wire, it can lead to a shock of 220 volts,” a senior physics teacher at a Nanjing high school was quoted as saying in a media report.
Xu Xuelu, an expert with the Nanjing Appliance Repairing Association, recommended people avoid making calls with their mobile phone while it is being recharged. In 2010, a man in northeast China was killed by an electric shock when making a phone call with a handset that was being recharged with an unauthorized charger, according to the China Consumers Association.
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