Residents of Kyapa-Kangabwa village, Sanje sub-county in Kyotera district were engulfed in sudden shock, as a mother and her two young children succumbed to an electric shock.
The unfortunate happened on Saturday at around 7:30pm when the children were reportedly trying to tap a high-voltage power line to get light into their house according to eyewitnesses.
On that day, 35-year-old Lukia Nayiga and her sons were going about their chores at home as dusk approached. While she was busy cooking, the boys – Hakim Lwanga, 11 and Kassim Kasozi, 9 – washed the utensils.
Apparently, Lwanga then went out to tap the power line passing over their house, as he reportedly always did, according to residents.
He climbed a jackfruit tree to access the line. After doing so, he climbed back down but without noticing that the wire had made contact with a metallic clothes line nearby.
Suddenly, everything turned topsy-turvy.
Lwanga’s younger sibling absentmindedly touched the clothes line, getting electrocuted. Noticing what was going on, Lwanga rushed there to try and save his brother. He, too, got shocked.
Perhaps getting the alarm, their mother dashed out of the house and attempted to rescue her boys. She was also fatally shocked.
In a matter of seconds, three family members had been killed by an electric shock. Residents said they had routinely tapped the electricity line above their house for power.
Nayiga’s husband – the father of their children – was not at home at the time of the incident. Sula Mukasa later said it was a dark day in his life, adding that he did not expect his sons to do such a dangerous thing.
Meanwhile, Yoweri Lukyamuzi, the officer-in-charge of Mayanja Police Station, said the residents alerted them over the incident. But nothing could be done to save the mother and her children. It all had happened so fast.
Lukyamuzi said that the three victims were barefoot at the time. Police took the bodies to Kakuuto Health Centre IV for postmortem, before being handed over to their family for burial.
Lukyamuzi warned the public to desist from tapping high-voltage lines to avoid incidents similar to Saturday’s.
In Kyotera, several high-voltage power lines cross dangerously above residential houses, graveyards, gardens and plantations, which poses a risk to anyone near them, especially during the rainy season.
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