Reports have claimed that the first person to use the Sarco suicide pod in Switzerland was found inside the machine with strangulation marks on her neck.
According to The Daily Mail, the 64-year-old American woman died inside the suicide pod on September 23 in a wooded area after she pushed the button that releases nitrogen gas into the sealed pod — causing death by hypoxia. The president of Swiss Sarco operator The Last Resort, Dr. Florian Willet, was arrested at the scene of the woman’s death along with two attorneys and a photographer who were involved.
An investigation was then launched into the woman’s death, which revealed she had serious neck injuries and may have been strangled, according to a forensic doctor.
However, the woman’s health diagnosis was called skull base osteomyelitis, an infection that can cause persistent, severe headaches and pain around the ear or eye, and is life-threatening. According to Newsweek, Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung said “a person close” to the Last Resort claimed this condition may have caused the marks on the woman’s neck.
The Last Resort, along with suicide organization Exit International, has denied claims of the woman suffering neck injuries. “Without the full autopsy report, The Last Resort cannot comment on the ‘suspicion’ of ‘injuries’ on the neck of the first Sarco user,” it said.
It added, “The Last Resort and Exit International maintain that the Sarco worked precisely as planned and the user died peacefully from nitrogen hypoxia. The allegations of intentional homicide are ridiculous and absurd. The Last Resort and Exit International strongly reject these allegations.”
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Working “precisely as planned” means that the woman died from nitrogen hypoxia — asphyxiation. It’s the same way death row inmate Kenneth Smith died in January. Though The Last Resort deemed the woman’s death ‘peaceful,’ Jeff Hood, spiritual advisor of Smith, argued otherwise.
Hood had a front-row seat to Smith’s death, calling it anything but peaceful, and more like “torture.”
The Last Resort maintains that the woman entered the pod on her own and that the gas levels remained at a toxic level for several minutes after her death.
“It looked exactly as we expected it to look. My guess is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,” said Dr. Philip Nitschke, the pod’s inventor, adding, “We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.” Cameras recorded the entire process.
The Sarco pod is not legal to use because it has not met the rules of the product safety law and its use of nitrogen is not in line with its approved purpose under the chemicals law, according to Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider.
