Strange deaths

UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

Since 1995, apparently healthy children around Muzaffarpur in Bihar, northern India, have suffered sudden seizures and lost consciousness. About 40 per cent of them died – 100 children every year. Doctors variously ascribed the phenomenon to heat stroke; to infections carried by rats, bats, or sandflies; or to pesticides used in the ubiquitous lychee orchards. The Muzaffarpur area produces about 70 per cent of India’s lychee harvest. New research, published in The Lancet Global Health (30 Jan 2017), suggests the children were poisoned by eating lychees on an empty stomach. Most were poor children who ate fruit that had fallen to the ground. Lychees contain toxins that inhibit the body’s ability to produce glucose, which affected young children whose blood sugar levels were already low because they were malnourished. They woke screaming in the night before suffering convulsions and losing consciousness as they suffered acute swelling of the brain.

Researchers examining sick children admitted to hospital in Muzaffarpur in 2014 found a link to an outbreak of ‘Jamaican vomiting sickness’ that caused brain swelling and convulsions in West Indian children. That outbreak was traced to the ackee fruit, which contains hypoglycin, a toxin that prevents the body from making glucose. Tests then showed that lychees also contained hypoglycin, as well as methylenecyclopropyl glycine (MCPG), with higher levels in unripe fruit. Outbreaks of the illness usually begin in mid-May and end in July, around the time lychees are harvested. Health officials now tell parents to make sure young children get an evening meal and limit the number of lychees they eat. livescience.com, 31 Jan; BBC News, 1 Feb; NY Times, 2 Feb 2017. Two Zimbabweans who stabbed their wives to death were acquitted last January after successfully persuading judges that they thought the women were witchcraft-created goblins. Mikiana Sandako, 24, was acquitted by Masvingo High Judge Justice Joseph Mafusire for fatally stabbing his sleeping wife after mistaking her for a goblin that was punching him. Lucy Chivasa, who represented Sandako, told the court that Sandako felt blows raining down on him. “He woke up and stabbed his wife in the neck using a chisel,” she said, adding mysteriously: “He went ahead and stabbed himself once on the neck.” Justice Mafusire ruled that Sandako was temporarily insane when he committed the crime and ordered him to be kept under psychiatric observation. A week earlier, Bulawayo High Court judge Francis Bere acquitted a man from Nkayi who axed to death a woman he also suspected to be a goblin. Sibangilizwe Moyo, 43, was facing a murder charge in connection with the death of Sithembiso Tshuma. Moyo said he axed Tshuma to death after she emerged from the darkness, blocked his way, and tried to strangle him. newobserveronline. com, 18 Jan 2017 A man found dead in a field near Canterbury, Kent, in early February has yet to be identified. He was carrying a black ‘cabin case’ containing toiletries, clothes and a book called Clinical Theology: A Theological and Psychological

Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care. He was in his mid-fifties to late sixties, slim to skinny, and around 5ft 6in (168cm) tall. The cause of death had not been confirmed, but police were convinced it was not suspicious. D.Mirror, 27 Feb 2017. Four years ago, a man walking his dog by Westwood Power Station near Wigan, Greater Manchester, noticed the body of a young man hanging from an electrical pylon roughly 10ft (3m) above the ground. He was dressed in “casual” clothing and had an olive complexion, suggesting a Middle Eastern ethnicity. His pockets contained £85 in cash, a packet of Amber Leaf tobacco with a number of roll-up cigarettes, and a one-way ticket for the 600 bus service from Leigh to Wigan, dated for the previous day. He has yet to be identified, but there was no reason to suspect foul play.

The death recalled the mystery of Todd Sees, who lived at Montour Ridge, West Chillisquaque Township, Pennsylvania. On 2 August 2002, the avid deer hunter had driven his four-wheeler up to a power line clearing to search for signs prior to the opening of deer season. Two days later, his body was found suspended above the ground in a thickly overgrown area. Apart from his underwear, most of his clothing was missing, and some reports suggested his remains looked “emaciated”. The time and cause of death remain unknown. mysteriousuniverse.org, 20 Mar 2017.