Woman, 74, dies trapped behind kitchen unit for days while hunting down mouse: 'She was unable to escape'
In one of the more bizarre mouse chases in history, a British woman died after being stuck behind a unit in her kitchen looking for a rodent.
An inquest heard that a missing person's case was opened on 74-year-old Carole Williams before police officers found her dead inside a confined space in her Bristol home's kitchen. The court was told that she might have been trying to locate a mouse when she accidentally trapped herself in the space and could not move.
A cab driver was the first one to raise concerns about Williams' whereabouts as she lived alone and had already suffered a stroke in October 2016. According to Assistant coroner Dr Peter Harrowing, the elderly woman failed to show up for a scheduled journey on Sunday, June 23. She also did not respond to phone calls.
The very next day, Avon and Somerset Police filed a missing person's report on Williams. On the same day, investigators paid her house a visit. That was when they discovered her body cramped in a space behind a kitchen unit, reported Mirror.
The autopsy report revealed that there was no evidence of external injuries or a further stroke. As a result, the medical examiner could not determine any specific cause of death or the exact time she had been trapped in the limited space. The probable cause was listed as due to compression in a confined space.
The inquest was later told that Williams could have died due to dehydration.
On questioning some of her friends, the police learned that Williams was facing a rodent problem in her house in the days leading up to her death. Hence it was wholly possible that she caught up in the space while trying to search for the rodent.
"It may be she was searching for the mouse or something else. She was unable to escape from that location and it was there she sadly died," Harrowing said.
Her death was ruled as accidental.
