At least five people were found dead in a tent on Sunday morning in Wau’s Eastern Bank in Western Bahr el Ghazal State.
They are suspected of having died of asphyxiation after sleeping with a fire in their tent.
A report from Wau Teaching Hospital confirmed that the deceased, an elderly man and woman, and three children died due to suffocation.
Santino Deng, the son of the deceased woman, told Radio Tamazuj Tuesday that the victims closed all the windows of the tent in which they were sleeping and lit a fire before they slept and that it might have led to their deaths.
“When we came in the morning and opened the tent, we found that there was not enough oxygen inside. We reported to the police and the prosecutor came and the police took the bodies to the hospital,” he explained. “The doctor did a postmortem and there was no sign that they were beaten. The doctor said the cause of the death is 90 percent lack of oxygen.”
Deng added: “My message to those who live in tents is to ensure that there is ventilation.”
When contacted, Western Bahr el Ghazal State Police Commissioner Major General James Simon Yasi confirmed the incident and said an investigation is ongoing.
“On 14 July, there was an incident in the Eastern Bank where five people died of suffocation. They live in a tent, so, people thought that there was something wrong with the tent,” he said. “The reason for the death of these five people is unknown and we took the dead bodies to the hospital to be tested by the doctor who will give us the concrete results and cause of the death in the tent.”
Gen. Yasi added: “A police case has been opened at Eastern Bank Police Station, we carried out a joint investigation with the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and we are now waiting for the postmortem results from the hospital.”