THE first woman to die inside the banned “suicide pod” was allegedly found with strangulation marks on her neck, according to a prosecutor.
The anonymous woman, 64 and identified as an American citizen, died last month inside the controversial capsule set up in a forest in Switzerland.
The Sarco, first unveiled in 2019, is a portable, human-sized pod which replaces the oxygen inside it with nitrogen, causing death by hypoxia.
It is self-operated by a button on the inside, providing death without medical supervision.
The woman is said to have initiated the dying process herself by pressing a button while lying in the pod in the middle of the forest.
However, a forensic expert who checked her body shortly after she died found injuries near her neck that appeared similar to strangulation marks.
The American woman was reportedly terminally ill and had been dying for two years.
She was diagnosed with Osteomyelitis – a disease that could have manifested the alleged injury marks on her neck – according to Dutch media.
It is a rare condition that happens when bacteria or fungi infect a person’s bone marrow.
Infections usually start on the skin at a wound or surgery site and then spread to the person’s bones through their bloodstream.
In most cases, the potentially fatal condition can cause permanent bone damage.
The woman is said to have travelled to Switzerland specifically to use the suicide capsule, local media reported.
But her death has now raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland, where active euthanasia is banned but assisted dying has been legal for decades.
Police in the northern Schaffhausen canton said the capsule had been used at a forest hut, after which several people were taken into custody — and are now facing criminal proceedings.
This includes Dr Florian Willet, the president of The Last Resort organisation – an assisted dying group which presented the Sarco pod in Zurich in July.
He is said to have been the only person present when the woman died.
Cops said in a statement: “The public prosecutor’s office of the canton of Schaffhausen has opened criminal proceedings against several people for inducement and aiding and abetting suicide… and several people have been placed in police custody.”
Peter Sticher, a chief prosecutor investigating the death of the woman, has now raised suspicions of “international homicide” after suggesting she was strangled to death.
He has demanded a court order to extend Willet’s custody.
However, there is no official autopsy report to support the claim – and Sticheris has not yet publicly accused Last Resort’s boss of “intentional homicide”.
Sarco’s inventor Philip Nitschke, a vocal supporter of assisted suicide and who followed the American woman’s death via video feed, said the dying process was “well”.
He told de Volkskrant: “When she entered the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button. She didn’t say anything. She really wanted to die.
“I estimate that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes.
“We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look.”
Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/12774103/woman-suicide-pod-strangled-death/