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Police rule out homicide in deaths of 2 girls
Print Edition
Police are probing into a report that two sisters, aged two and four, died inside a washing machine at their home in Nanchang, capital of east China’s Jiangxi Province.
A late Xinhua news agency report yesterday said police ruled out the possibility of murder after preliminary investigation.
Nanchang police said the two girls died of suffocation, while there were no signs of homicide. But they could not yet say how the girls got into the washing machine that led to their deaths.
Police launched an investigation early yesterday after the Internet was flooded with speculation over the incident.
Netizens wondered how the two girls could have squeezed into the narrow space of the washing machine.
Some said, given their weight, the machine should have been overloaded and wouldn’t work.
Others suspected it could be a case of murder.
But the girls’ uncle said the machine was to blame, and not the two kids, police in Qiaoshe Town said.
The tragic incident occurred on Saturday afternoon when the two girls were reportedly playing in the living room. Their father was watching TV in the bedroom while their mother was cooking in the kitchen, local news portal, www.jxgdw.com reported yesterday.
Their grandfather said it was possible that the children climbed onto a chair and got into the washing machine, which was plugged in. He said they must have pressed the start button accidentally and got trapped inside.
The parents found out that the children were missing five minutes later when they heard something drop on the floor, the grandfather told police. They started looking for them at home and outside in the community. About half an hour later, the father saw the flashing lights of the washing machine, and was told by his wife that she did not start it, the report said.
They discovered the two girls inside with blood splattered all over the machine.
The girls were immediately rushed to the town clinic but doctors declared them dead, a witness said.
The family arranged for the funeral the same day without requesting an autopsy.
The top-loading washing machine was a product of domestic brand Haier.
The company issued a statement on its Weibo account at about 6pm yesterday, refuting the version published in the news portal, saying the machine could not have spun in the conditions described in the report.
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