Faulty USB phone charger blamed for death

A mobile phone business faces prosecution over the death of a woman electrocuted by a faulty USB phone charger at her home on the NSW central coast.

Mother-of-two Sheryl Anne Aldeguer was found dead while wearing headphones inside an East Gosford home with burns on her ears and chest after a faulty charger sent a high voltage through her body, according to Fair Trading NSW.
Sheryl Aldeguer, pictured with husband Luigi.

A Filipino national, Ms Aldeguer was found dead by friends on April 23.

It is believed a dodgy $4.95 phone charger sent a high-voltage electrical pulse into her phone, which transferred to the earphones she had connected to a laptop.

The 28-year-old, from the Philippines, was to start work as a theatre nurse at Gosford Hospital within days of her death.

She had spent six months in Melbourne converting her nursing training to Australian standards and she had hoped her young family would join her within months.

Fair Trading NSW’s Lynelle Collins said Ms Aldeguer, who was in Australia on a working visa, was talking on the phone which was plugged into a wall socket at the time.

“The voltage seems to travel up through the faulty charger into her phone and she was wearing earplugs and also operating a laptop which was also plugged into a power point,” Ms Collins said.

“So the (electricity) travelled back down through the earphones to the laptop and into the power point,” she said.

“Two-hundred-and-forty volts (then) travelled up into the phone which obviously the phone isn’t designed to handle.

Read more: [link to www.smh.com.au]

Last Edited by Face Palmer on 06/30/2014 08:25 AM