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Drowning is the third most common cause of accidental death. Water is the usual suspect—whether it’s children left alone by a pool or swimmers overtaken by strong currents. But while water is the most common medium for drowning, it is by no means the only one. Drowning can happen in any type of liquid.
Here are ten extraordinary drowning incidents that did not take place in water. Some of these substances likely turned a tragic death into a particularly harrowing experience. On the other hand, others may have provided the victims with a slightly more merciful end.
10. Submerged in Paint
Christopher Shute, a 30-year-old employee at a Ford transit van factory in Southampton, England, encountered a fatal accident involving a massive paint tank. This tank was designed to collect and recycle paint from the factory’s paint shop. During its first year of use, the tank began malfunctioning frequently, leading to overflow incidents where paint spilled out.
In August 2000, while Shute was on duty, the paint tank began to overflow. He attempted to stop the spill by climbing on top of the tank. Unfortunately, while up there, Shute fell through an opening where a lid had been removed. The overflowing paint would have obscured his view, making it impossible for him to notice the missing lid.
Shute made an effort to pull himself out, and a colleague tried to assist him, but the slippery paint made it impossible. Tragically, Shute drowned.
Just before Shute's fatal accident, another worker had fallen into the same tank during cleaning. If proper safety rails and protocols had been in place, Shute's death could have been prevented.
Ford and two managers were held accountable for Shute's death. The renowned car manufacturer and the two managers overseeing Shute admitted to negligence in ensuring worker safety. As a result, Ford was fined £300,000, and the managers received fines of £5,000 each.
9. Trapped in a Grease Pit
In October 2017, three-year-old Sadie Grace Andrews visited an ice cream shop in Auburn, Alabama, with her family. While playing behind the store with her two siblings, Sadie stepped on the lid of a grease trap, which caused the lid to flip open. Sadie fell into the 1.8-meter (6-foot) deep pit, and the lid closed behind her.
Surveillance footage revealed that her father had briefly turned away. When her family noticed Sadie was missing, they immediately alerted the authorities and began searching. Within ten minutes, her father found her unresponsive in the grease trap. Family members and ice cream shop employees performed CPR until paramedics arrived. Sadie was rushed to the hospital, where she was declared dead. Her death was ruled as an accidental drowning.
8. Submerged in Molasses
In the summer of 2016, Robert Herweyer, newly married and expecting his first child, worked for Agri-Technology in Saugatuck, Michigan, a company that supplies agricultural products to farms. On July 26, 2016, Herweyer was cleaning a 3.7-meter (12-foot) molasses tank. When the molasses level dropped too low to pump out, he entered the tank to adjust a valve. Using safety gear, he lowered himself into the tank with straps and a forklift, assisted by a coworker. Although he appeared fine while working, when he started to climb out, he suddenly stopped moving.
His coworker called out to him, but Herweyer did not respond. He slipped beneath the molasses and became trapped. His coworker attempted to pull him out of the tank but was unsuccessful before rushing off to get assistance. The plant owner used an electric saw to cut open the tank and free Herweyer. Witnesses estimate he was submerged for about four to five minutes before being rescued. Despite efforts to revive him with CPR, he did not respond. The emergency room doctor who treated him found molasses in his lungs, confirming that Herweyer died from drowning.
7. Falling Into Manure Ponds
A drive through rural areas can often be accompanied by the unpleasant scent of manure. If you think the odor is bad, imagine the experience of drowning in it.
In February 2016, Ruperto Vazquez-Carrera arrived for his shift at Sunrise Organic Dairy in Idaho. While driving a feed truck across the farm, he crashed it into a manure pond. After escaping the truck, he became disoriented while swimming through the muck made of animal feces and urine. His body was found 64 meters (210 feet) from the truck, facing away from the direction that would have led him to safety.
Drowning in manure occurs more frequently than one might expect. Just seven months after Vazquez-Carrera's death, a dairy worker at another Idaho farm suffered the same fate after driving a tractor into a manure pond.
Manure-filled ponds are a common feature on dairy farms. They are used to store animal waste and prevent it from contaminating nearby waterways. The contents are later repurposed as fertilizer. On both Idaho farms where workers drowned in manure, there were no safety barriers, floodlights, or even signs to warn drivers of the danger, particularly in the early hours of the morning.
6. Submerged in Liquefied Vegetables
In July 2010, a tragedy struck at a ketchup factory in Lucknow, India. The factory housed a 6-meter-deep (20-foot) tank used to ferment vegetables. While a worker was scooping fermented liquid from the tank, her ladder slipped, and she fell in. Her coworkers rushed to assist, but in a fatal sequence, seven more individuals fell into the tank.
Authorities arrived on the scene and managed to extract the workers from the vat. They were immediately taken to a local trauma center, where six of them were declared dead.
Police speculated that once inside the tank, the toxic gases generated during the fermentation process caused the workers to lose consciousness. Once they were unconscious, they drowned in the liquefied vegetables.
5. Fatal Chocolate Incident
In 2002, Yoni Cordon was employed at Kargher Corporation, a candy factory in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. His body was found submerged in a 4,500-liter (1,200-gallon) vat of melted chocolate.
A platform near the vat was used to mix ingredients, and it is believed that the 19-year-old slipped while working on it, falling into the tank. No one witnessed his fall, so it remains unclear how long he was in the tank before his body was discovered. Foul play was ruled out, and Cordon’s death was deemed accidental.
Cordon wasn't the only person to die in a chocolate vat. In 2009, Vincent Smith II fell into a vat of melted chocolate while working at Cocoa Services Inc. in New Jersey. The 29-year-old, who had a temporary position at the company, was standing on a 2.7-meter (9-foot) platform when a mixing blade struck him, knocking him into the tank. Despite the efforts of coworkers, Smith was dead by the time he was pulled from the molten chocolate.
4. Trapped in Cooking Oil
Donald Boone had worked at a Frito-Lay factory in Lubbock, Texas for over six years. On February 9, 2001, Boone and a coworker were performing repairs on the roof of a 4.5-meter (15 ft) tank containing cooking oil. While Boone's coworker bent down to pick up a tool, he looked up to find Boone’s legs vanishing through a 0.6-meter (2 ft) opening in the tank.
Boone’s coworker immediately called for help. A valve to release the oil was opened, and another worker attempted to locate Boone through the tank’s roof opening, but all he could see were Boone's shoes.
Paramedics arrived swiftly, just five minutes after Boone’s fall. He was pulled from the oil and rushed to the emergency room, but despite resuscitation efforts, he remained unresponsive. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
It was later determined that Boone had struck his head during the fall, which caused him to lose consciousness and drown in the cooking oil.
Frito-Lay Inc. faced a $57,000 fine for safety violations uncovered during the investigation into Boone’s tragic death.
3. The Beer Tsunami
Located in St. Giles, London, the Horse Shoe Brewery installed a towering 6.7-meter-high (22 ft) wooden fermentation tank in 1810. This enormous structure was held together by massive iron rings. However, on October 17, 1814, one of the iron rings broke. The tank ruptured, unleashing a tidal wave of beer. The force of the beer flood was so intense that it caused the brewery’s back wall to collapse, and several other containers of liquid broke, contributing to the 4.5-meter-high (15 ft) beer flood that engulfed the streets. In total, over 1.2 million liters (320,000 gal) of beer spilled out from the brewery.
The area around the brewery was densely populated with slums, and it wasn’t long before the flood of beer claimed several lives. A total of eight people drowned, including four mourners attending a wake for a toddler who had passed away the day before.
Those who survived were quick to take advantage of the disaster. Hundreds of people gathered containers to collect the free beer that flowed from the brewery. However, overconsumption led to alcohol poisoning, resulting in another death days later. Grieving relatives of the flood victims charged people to view the bodies of their loved ones. One such grim spectacle caused a crowd to gather in a house, where the floor eventually gave way, plunging everyone into a beer-filled cellar.
The incident led to breweries gradually replacing their wooden fermentation tanks with reinforced concrete vats.
2. Drowned in Sulfuric Acid
Fernando Gonzalez, an 18-year-old worker at Coastal Circuits Factory in Redwood City, California, was expected to return home early on the morning of September 23, 2007, after completing a late-night shift. When he didn’t arrive, his father, also employed at Coastal Circuits, went to the factory to search for him. It was shortly before 2:00 AM when Gonzalez’s father discovered his son’s lifeless body in a vat of sulfuric acid.
Initial reports indicated that Gonzalez was one of two employees working that night. He had been submerging circuit boards in the sulfuric acid. Authorities believe the toxic fumes from the chemicals caused Gonzalez to lose consciousness, causing him to fall forward into the vat and drown.
Many questions remained unanswered in the aftermath of Gonzalez’s tragic death. A spokesperson from Coastal Circuits declined to comment on why Gonzalez had been working such a late shift with only one other employee present, or why he wasn't wearing facial protection while handling hazardous chemicals. There was also no explanation provided as to why the other employee did not call for help following the accident.
Subsequent reports raised even more questions than answers. Gonzalez was initially reported as working alone when the incident occurred, with no mention of another employee. Toxicology results later revealed that Gonzalez had not been affected by any chemicals prior to falling face-first into the vat of sulfuric acid.
Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding the event, authorities did not treat Gonzalez's drowning as suspicious, and his death was classified as an accident.
1. Falling Into A Pit Toilet
In 2014, Michael Komape, a five-year-old boy, was starting his first year of primary school in a South African village on the outskirts of Polokwane. On January 20, Michael’s mother, Rosina, received a call from the school principal, informing her that Michael had been missing for about two hours.
When Rosina reached the school, teachers informed her that they had searched every corner, including the student restrooms. They also asked Rosina to avoid going near the toilets. However, Rosina soon saw Michael’s best friend, who revealed that he had witnessed Michael fall into one of the toilets. Upon peering into the pit toilet indicated by his friend, Rosina saw her son’s arm rising from the mass of waste. Tragically, Michael had drowned in human excrement.
The fire department recovered Michael’s body from the pit, and the school quickly closed the student toilets. Confronted with the liability of the neglected pit toilets that led to Michael’s death, the government swiftly installed new lavatories at the primary school, as well as other schools in the area, within a matter of weeks.
Michael’s family is suing the state for his untimely death. The trial, however, was delayed until November 2017 due to various technical hold-ups. The Komape family seeks monetary compensation for the emotional distress and trauma they endured, in addition to claiming damages for constitutional violations. They are also demanding changes to the safety and hygiene standards in schools, along with an official apology from the state for its neglect, which contributed to Michael’s death.
