A 14-year-old Texas girl was reportedly electrocuted while using her cell phone in a bathtub over the weekend, prompting a warning from her family.
Madison Coe had the electronic device plugged into a bathroom outlet at her father’s house in Lovington, New Mexico on Sunday when her family says she was fatally shocked by the device.
“There was a burn mark on her hand,” her grandmother, Donna O’Guinn, told KCBD-TV of the eighth-grader who just graduated middle school in Lubbock, Texas. “The hand that would have grabbed the phone. That was just very obvious that that’s what had happened.”
O’Guinn said the family is sharing what happened in hopes that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“We want something good to come out of this ... awareness of not using your cell phone in the bathroom as it is plugged in and charging,” she told the station. The type of cell phone used by the teen was not disclosed.
The Frenship Independent School District, where Coe was a student, mourned her loss in a statement obtained by HuffPost.
“We wish to share our heartfelt sympathy with her family and friends as we carry the burden of this tragedy together,” the statement read.
She is reportedly not the first to die in such a way.
A 32-year-old London man was similarly electrocuted in December after his iPhone’s charger made contact with his bath water, the BBC reported.
Richard Bull’s death led a coroner to announce plans to conduct an investigation into the matter, with the final report sent to Apple in hopes of preventing future deaths. According to The Sun, Bull was found suffering burns on his chest, arms and hand.
A GoFundMe account set up to help pay for a memorial for Coe has raised more than $7,000 as of Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal government agency that monitors products’ safety risks, told HuffPost on Tuesday that they are investigating the incident and that their probe is in its early stages.
The Lea County Coroner and Sheriff’s Office did not immediately reply to requests for comment from HuffPost.