The first ever woman to be euthanized via a suicide pod in Switzerland had to be strangled to death by her executor due to a malfunction with the machine, according to reports.
The president of Sarco’s operator The Last Resort, Dr Florian Willet, was arrested along with several other people nearby.
Lbc.co.uk reports: The inventor of the Sarco, Philip Nitschke, followed the process by video call but was unable to catch all of it due to technical difficulties.
A 64-year-old American mother-of-two, who has not been named, died inside the capsule in the middle of a forest near a cabin in Merishausen, Switzerland on September 23.
The pod, which prior to this had never been used, allows a person inside the device to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber.
The person inside is then supposed to fall asleep before dying by suffocation.
Willet remains in police custody in Switzerland nearly five weeks after the incident. He was the only person present when the woman died, describing her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified”.
The Swiss chief prosecutor of the case, Peter Sticher, thinks the death might have gone quite differently, raising suspicions that the woman may have been strangled in a case of ‘intentional homicide’, reports the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.
The newspaper reports that the pod is opened and closed several times before the woman presses the button which triggers the procedure, to test its closure.
A Forensic doctor present at the scene told the court that the woman had, among other things, severe injuries to her neck.
According to the news outlet, the company president, who was standing beside the woman throughout the event, was heard to tell the pod’s designer over video call: “She’s still alive, Philip”.
The comments came six-and-a-half minutes after the user pressed the button to end her own life.
The president is said to have been confused by the sound of an alarm – thought to be a heart-rate monitor. The court heard how he continued to lean over the Sarco pod to peer inside, before the alarm ceases.
The woman decided to take her life using the Sarco because of a longstanding disease, the company said. She had been diagnosed with skull base osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone marrow.
She said she had wished to die “for at least two years” after suffering from the “very serious illness that involves severe pain”.
Due to an immune disorder, the woman was unable to receive effective treatment for her osteomyelitis, The Last Resort disclosed.
After being notified of her death by the two lawyers involved in the project and present at the scene, the police swept the forest and arrested everyone near the Sarco, including a photographer for Volkskrant.
In September, chief prosecutor Sticher told Swiss newspaper Blick: “We warned them in writing, we said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’
Everyone arrested has since been released except for Willet. Volkskrant has questioned why Sticher has not publicly accused Willet of ‘intentional homicide’ but has been using the suspicion to get judges to extend Willet’s custody.
A criminal investigation into the pod is underway and all of the 371 active applications have been suspended for use.