By Adadareporters
The Anambra Police Command, weekend, said the family of five that died at Oze, Nkwelle Ezinaka in Anambra State died of carbon monoxide emission from their generator. The police were reacting to information in some quarters that they might have been killed by some other forces.
The clarification was contained in a statement by the command’s public relations officer, DSP Tochukwu Ikenga.
He wrote, “On 17th July, 2023 at about 0400hours, the lifeless bodies of a family of five were discovered in a bungalow at Oze Village, Nkwelle Ezunaka.
“Information in the public domain had it that they died the first night they moved into the new building. Names of the deceased were given as Ifeanyi Okoh, 32, from Akegbe-Ugwu, Enugu State; his wife Chiamaka Okoh, 28; two of their children, Chinecherem Okoh, three, and Catherine Okoh, two, as well as the mother of the wife, Anthonia Onwukube, 56.
“A visit to the scene of the incident revealed a generator connected to the house electricity grid and kept in a confined space without proper ventilation.
“An autopsy conducted on the corpses revealed the cause of death to be carbon monoxide poisoning. They were killed by fumes from the generator.”
Meanwhile, the state commissioner of police, CP Aderemi Adeoye, while commiserating with the bereaved families, advised the public ‘on the terrible dangers of operating generators indoors as carbon monoxide which is emitted in the fume is a deadly gas that has wiped out several families due to ignorance’.
He advised that generators be kept in well-ventilated spaces while in use, and assured that the command would ‘continuously sensitize the public to domestic hazards that may claim lives in order to avert avoidable deaths’.
