A British man has died and his wife has been rushed to hospital after a suspected carbon monoxide leak at their home in Majorca.
Police found the couple lying on their bed and a strong smell of gas coming the property when they responded to an emergency call around 3pm yesterday afternoon.
The man was already dead and his wife was unconscious and breathing with difficulty.
She was admitted to Manacor Hospital, close to the couple’s home in the small municipality of Capdepera in the east of the island.
Her condition early this morning was not immediately clear.
An investigation into the tragedy, led by the Civil Guard, is ongoing and the property has been sealed off with police tape.
But initial reports are pointing to the cause being a faulty gas-powered fridge.
Well-placed sources said they were investigating the possibility deadly carbon monoxide gas had been seeping out all night while the couple slept in the main bedroom and the unnamed British man had died yesterday morning.
A relative is said to have called the emergency services after sensing something was wrong because he couldn’t contact them.
Unconfirmed local reports said the property where the tragedy occurred belonged to the man’s dad and the couple had only moved in a few days earlier.
Their ages have not yet been confirmed but the man was thought to have been 40 and his partner 38.
The latest tragedy comes less than five month after a similar tragedy on the island involving a British couple at their home in Majorca.
Michael Rowan, 62, and his 56-year-old partner Sharon Price were found lifeless at their country property near the picturesque town of Selva, less than an hour’s drive from Capdepera, on December 19 last year after their worried UK-based son got someone to go round and check on them.
A subsequent post-mortem confirmed they died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the farmhouse they had moved to the previous year.
Their bodies laid undiscovered for two days.
Local reports at the time linked the intoxications to a leak in a wood burning stove through loose-fitting pipework that meant poisonous fumes entered the room where it was installed.
The motor of a portable generator said to have been kept inside the property, despite recommendations appliances of this kind should be kept outside, is also believed to have produced the odourless and colourless gas blamed for the couple’s deaths.
