Widow, 3 children die from generator fume in Lagos

A widow and her three children have been killed by fumes coming from a generating set they had kept in a room in their apartment.
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It was a sad scene after the body of a 50-year-old widow, Aishat Mohammed Idris and her three children, Gaddafi, 22, Usalaman, 16 and eight-year-old Yusuf, were found dead in their apartment at 4, Adeigbe Street, Igbogbo, Ikorodu, Lagos State.

The Nation reports that the victims who were from Kura Local Government Area of Kano State were allegedly killed while sleeping in their apartment by generator fumes on Saturday, May 6, 2017.

A family member said that the corpses of the deceased were discovered by one of the widow’s cousins who visited the family in the morning.

"The family just came to Lagos last month. Their father died a few years ago. So, the woman’s mother who lives abroad, sent money to her nephew in Lagos to rent a house and bring them down.

The nephew got the house in Ikorodu, went to Kano and brought Aishat and her three children. They usually exchanged visits. Sometimes they go to his house on Lagos Island, other times he visits them at Igbogbo.

So, that Saturday was his turn to visit and he got there in the morning with a teacher for the youngest child. After knocking so many times without response, he started calling the woman’s phone. It was ringing inside the house but no one was picking.

He then went to the back and opened one of the windows. It was when he peeped through that he saw all of them, lying lifeless. He screamed and people started coming out.

At first, he wanted to break the door but we told him to go to the police and make a report. So, policemen followed him to the house and they broke the door.

Everyone entered inside to see things for themselves. People were crying. There were white substances on their nostrils like foam. Policemen took the photographs of the bodies and the house before they took them away,” the relative said.

The cousin who found the victims also narrated what happened thus:

“It’s a painful loss for us. It was generator fume that killed them. They put on a generator inside one of the rooms and all of them slept in the parlour.

Everywhere was locked and so, they must have inhaled the fume from the generator. I just don’t know why they put the generator inside the room. When I got there, I didn’t hear generator sound.

But when police opened the door, they checked the generator and the fuel in it had finished. It seems the generator went off by itself. But the whole place was smelling of generator fume.

I have called my aunt and she said an autopsy should be conducted on the bodies. The police took them to Ikorodu General Hospital mortuary.”

Confirming the incident, the State Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Olarinde Famous-Cole, said the police was investigating a case of sudden and unnatural death, adding that an autopsy would be conducted to ascertain what happened.