A young boy of only 7 years old passed away recently during a family vacation in Phuket, Thailand. The cause of death for Connor O'Keefe is electrocution as the boy was unplugging his Game Boy charger after a recent swim in the hotel pool. Still wet, the charger ended up electrocuting the child, leaving him to be discovered by his mother.Of course, as with any tragic news involving video games in any shape or form, the gaming system is going to be looked at as a scapegoat in this whole ordeal. Now, we do not wish to be cold or heartless, but the child was wet when touching an electrical socket, something everyone knows is not a good idea, so hopefully this will all blow over and public outcry for the boycott and destruction of all things Game Boy will not come to pass.
Our sympathies go out to his mother and family.
Update: Looks like Nintendo has officially responded to the news of Connor's death here. Nintendo says the "details involving Connor's accident are unclear" and prevent them from commenting any further at this time.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-05-2007 @ 1:08PM
Adam said...
where the hell were the parents, why weren't they watching him? god damn idiots...
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1-05-2007 @ 1:31PM
20XX said...
I think this is the kinda rare case when the gaming sites are making a bigger deal about mainstream press making a big deal out of the event, than the mainstream press made about the event.
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1-05-2007 @ 2:03PM
mandarin said...
I think the best way to say this is that touching any socket with wet hands are a complete No-no...
Of course his parents probably didnt tell him that..
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1-05-2007 @ 2:44PM
James said...
If you read some of the reports it says that they were England but were in Thailand on vacation. It is 2007 don't people realize that there are different electrical sockets in different countries with different voltage. Even if he wasn't wet, which he probably was, an accident probably still could have happened. I am sure that there is something in the GBA warning packet that comes with it about this. Sorry to the family for their loss, but it's not Nintendo's fault this could have happened with any other device.
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1-05-2007 @ 4:36PM
Wasyl said...
Has anyone actually tried to blame Nintendo yet? Aren't we jumping on the cross a little too soon?
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1-05-2007 @ 4:58PM
JM said...
I think its absolutely shocking. I bet the parents were amped up on goofballs and doing the electric slide in the hotel lobby rather than keeping an eye on young Conner, who was probably known to have a short fuse.
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1-05-2007 @ 5:46PM
Matt said...
I don't know if this is just me or not, but everytime I open up a new DS game case now, the warning papers are on top of everything else (the ads, the manual). I don't doubt that people are going to start blaming Nintendo for this because they didn't make those warnings clear enough. But seriously, as far as I can remember, there have been warnings on everything electronic especially to stay away from water. It's an issue of how we've become desensitized to common things.
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1-05-2007 @ 6:40PM
Nmaster said...
Wait, why did Nintendo make a response? That doesn't make sense unless the parents were threatening to sue or something.
This isn't related to video games at all. This is just the bazillionth case of the hair dryer in the bathtub bit.
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1-06-2007 @ 12:12AM
James said...
To #1. Obviously, you've never had children. Or you are one. In either case, accidents happen and until you have children, you have no idea how hard it is to monitor them 24/7.
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1-06-2007 @ 2:47PM
Dan said...
I really doubt that this would have happened in a non-Third World country. Anyone who has been to Thailand knows how haphazardly their electrical systems are wired (one look at a utility pole tells you this). More than likely, this particular hotel didn't have their wiring done to the same standard as expected by building codes in developed countries, where fuses and breakers might have saved this poor child. In my opinion, this is far more to blame than the parents and Nintendo combined.
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1-07-2007 @ 10:36PM
JM said...
This is what you get when you expect a 7 year old kid to keep current on foreign electricity.
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1-07-2007 @ 11:15PM
754boy said...
Lol, they can't blame Nintendo for this. Water + Electricity = no fun. Doesn't matter who made the adapter, sadly, the result was most likely gonna be the same.
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