Carbon monoxide behind death of Asian woman and her dog in Dubai

Sumayya Saad, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Police investigation has revealed that carbon monoxide killed an Asian woman and her dog in the Bur Dubai area. It took experts from Dubai Police's Crime Scene Department just a few minutes to decipher the case, in which a Filipina friend was also injured.

According to Colonel Makki Salman Ahmed Salman, Director of the Crime Scene Department, the operations room in Bur Dubai received a report that a woman and her dog were killed and her Filipina friend were injured. The victim and her friend were living in an annex to a villa rented by an Asian and accommodating more than one family.

Preliminary investigations showed that there was no suspect in the case. Asked about what happened, the injured Filipina stated that they had dinner that evening in a restaurant in Sharjah and fed the dog from the same food, adding that food poisoning might be behind the death of her friend and her dog.

Analyses, however, proved that food poisoning was not behind the death of the victim and her dog. After taking fingerprints and while leaving the villa, the investigators found that there was a covered shut down electric generator, which was used by the lessor after electricity had been cut off from the villa due to his violation of a law that prohibited more than a family to live in one villa.

The department sought the help of a specialized team who turned on the generator to find that within minutes smoke filled the place, the rooms and even the corridors and entered the room in which the Asian was living, causing her and her dog to be asphyxiated and her friend to be injured.

The victims suffered a gradual muscle paralysis due to the inhalation of carbon monoxide gas, as a result of which she died, while the Filipina managed to escape because the bathroom she was in was far from the generator.

Salman called on the members of the society to abide by health and safety procedures for generators and not to close doors from inside to help speed up rescue operations.

He asked them to take precaution and carry out regular maintenance for the devices that work inside their houses, stressing the need for them to install alarms for early detection of dangers.