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Tragic Death in Daegu
The Marmot has a story on a 14 year old foreigner who died in a sauna - His mother is an English teacher. It definitely sounds like criminal negligence and incompetence all around.
I sent an email to my editor at the Korea Herald to see about this getting into national media and not just on blogs.
Got a really distressing — and infuriating — email this morning from a reader telling me of the tragic death of a 14-year-old son of a foreign English teacher in a sauna in Daegu. Mike McStay in Daejeon has been covering it on his blog, and all I have to say is I’m completely speechless. To give you the summary I got in the email:
There has been no coverage of this story, and it’s heartbreaking. A 14 year old boy, Mike, died in a sauna this past weekend. The sauna staff assumed he was dead and waited almost an hour to notify his mother in the women’s area. Turns out he WASN’T dead, but because they waited so long to try to revive him, he ended up dying.
The Daegu police are not conducting an investigation. They started one later, but they won’t even give the victim’s mother, Stephannie, a copy of the police report (I suspect that none exists).
From Mike McStay’s blog:
What do you call it when a room full of men/boys doing their family bathing before the Buddha holiday just turn their backs on someone who’s coughing & retching so bad that there’s extensive damage to his throat, lungs & back of the mouth. What do you call it when ’someone” called him in DOA at 11:02, the mother isn’t notified until 11:45 and she arrives in the parking lot to discover that the DOA is actually alive & NOW doesn’t have proper help because the WRONG type of ambulance was sent.
The mother now has a page open on Facebook with information on this tragedy.
My condolences got to Stephannie White at this difficult time.
UPDATE: I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t point out that so far, there have been no reports on the death, so there are many unanswered questions and nothing you read is “official.” I just called the establishment in question (note to fellow bloggers/netizens: I’d remove the name of the place for legal reasons), and they couldn’t even confirm whether an incident took place (BTW, I don’t blame them for that — obviously, this is not something you discuss with every Tom, Dick and Harry that calls), and the person who might be able to wasn’t in (probably not smoke & mirrors, given I called at lunch). There could very well be more sides to this story; we’ll have to wait to learn more.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday May 15, 2008 at 01:25 PM
Random_Ramblings | ESL_in_the_News |
Jeff wrote 160 words on Friday May 16, 2008 at 12:39 AM
This I must say is a tragic event in as much as the death of anyone that age is tragic.
As a former ESL Teacher in Korea (was there 6 years) and a frequent visitor to the saunas and public bath houses this is surprising.
From all accounts I have read so far, none of which are very official this sounds like an accidental death that may have been preventable. I detect no foul play anywhere in the accounts, except perhaps the wild accusations being irresponsibly tossed around on various discussion forums. Those accusations or rape or murder demonstrate a clear lack of maturity and/or class and probably hurt the family needlessly.
I do hope this does not turn into a Koreans are to blame story.
Until a conclusive report comes out (if it does and thats up to the police and to the family) this sounds like a tragic event and I feel sad for the parents and family.