Australian Tourist Falls in Water while Checking Facebook, Could Not Swim but Held on to Phone
If your parents warned you how fatal Facebook could be, here is an incident you would not like them to know. A tourist from Taiwan, who was visiting Australia, walked off a pier in Melbourne because she was apparently engrossed in checking her Facebook profile.
The woman, in her mid-20s, fell into Port Phillip Bay straight from St Kilda late night on Monday. One of the witnesses informed the police who rescued the woman in a speedboat. It took them about 20 minutes to reach her. The woman was admitted in a hospital, but was found in a stable state, police informed. The woman apologised for the incident, BBC reports.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted Senior Constable Dean Kelly that the woman was laying on her back in the water in floating position metres away from the pier. She told them later on that she did not know how to swim. However, she was still holding her mobile. She admitted that that she was checking her Facebook page on the phone as she fell in.
Constable Kelly said that the woman was not splashing around much as she was actually floating. There was a possibility that the woman was still in shock, which is very much possible under this kind of situation when a victim suffers a sudden mishap. On the other hand, it is also possible that she was more bothered about the posts being shared on Facebook.
The incident took place at 11:30 pm local time and the woman was extremely lucky to be seen by people when she fell in. it was pretty late at night and no one could have seen her falling in the water. In that case, no one would have known how many hours she had to be in the water before being rescued.
Constable Kelly asked people to be more attentive when using social networking Web sites while they are moving around water. Meanwhile, Victoria police issued a statement saying that the woman held her phone "throughout the entire ordeal."