A 19-year-old man in Kaohsiung on Tuesday fell into a coma after allegedly being electrocuted by a faulty KTV microphone.
The man, surnamed Hsu (許), and two friends were partying in a KTV booth on the second floor of a Daliao District (大寮) karaoke and prawn-fishing restaurant called Fenglin (鳳林) on the night of the incident, Kaohsiung City Police Department officers said.
The KTV party, which began at 5pm, was interrupted when Hsu, barefoot and singing into a microphone, suddenly cried: “I’ve been shocked” and fell to the floor at about 6:40pm, his friends said.
Hsu’s friends said they thought he joking, but they became alarmed when he remained motionless for about 10 seconds and rushed to help him.
They said Hsu’s eyes had rolled back, and as they touched his body, they felt a jolt of electricity, after which they called 119.
“The unconscious patient arrived in a comatose state, with a blister on his right foot, but we are unable to ascertain whether it was caused by electrocution,” Kaohsiung Municipal Hsiao Kang Hospital said in a statement.
It was reported yesterday that Hsu had been transferred to Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, where he remained in critical condition on life support, with a rating of three on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which is indicative of severe brain damage.
Hsu’s family on Wednesday filed suit against the KTV establishment for negligence.
Hsu’s friends also accused the Fenglin KTV and restaurant of having refused to accept responsibility for the incident.
However, Fenglin accused the group of using amphetamines.
Fenglin said its staff moved to assist Hsu as soon as they were informed of the incident, and while the staff do not know what happened, nobody has ever been electrocuted by one of its microphones.
The police said investigations are ongoing, because although an unused syringe was discovered at the scene, they do not know if it belonged to Hsu and his friends, adding that they saw KTV employees handling the microphone without any problem.
The booth had no closed-circuit TV cameras, the police added.
Chungshan Industrial and Commercial School physics teacher Hsu Hua-chin (許華欽) said: “The human body is a conductor of electricity, and there are two possible ways a person might be electrocuted. One is to be shocked by accumulated static, but this kind of current has an insufficient voltage to inflict harm. Second is to be electrocuted when the body forms a circuit for a sustained and powerful current capable of doing damage, but this is usually prevented by the presence of a non-conductive element breaking the circuit.”
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