ELECTROCUTED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 129, 3 June 1935, Page 8

ELECTROCUTED.

BOY OF FIVE YEARS. IRON SHED "ALIVE." THREE FINGERS BURNED. Ronald Rudd. five years and a half [ old, who lived with his parents at Blockhouse Bay Road, Blockhouse Bay, was electrocuted this morning. The lad was found by his grandmother at about 0.20 o'clock lying apparently dead on damp ground behind | a galvanised iron shed near his parents house. He had been missing for not longer than half an hour. Dr. Robert Warnock, of Avondalo, was called, but the child was dead when he arrived at half-past nine. The cause of death evidently was contact with an electric current, because three fingers of the right hand were charred and burned as though a red-hot bar had been grasped. Officials of the Auckland Electric Power Board later disconnected power from the house pending an investigation into the accident. An electrical engineer gave a possible explanation of the accident. He said that, probably there had been a contact between some electric wiring connected with the shed and the structure's iron walls. The building had thus become "alive." An iron bedstead lying against a wall had also become "alive" as tlie result, and it was likely that the boy had been electrocuted through having touched the bedstead. The fact that he had been standing on damp ground had I accentuated the shock.