SYDNEY – An Australian teenager holidaying in Bali was fatally electrocuted by live wires, officials said Sunday, with reports his friends initially thought it was a prank.
Jake Flannery, 18, died Saturday after touching live wires on the popular Indonesian island’s Jalan Legian tourist strip, where he was celebrating finishing high school with friends, according to Australian media reports.
The foreign office confirmed that they were providing consular assistance to “the family of a teenager from New South Wales who died in Bali on 26 November as a result of accidental electrocution.
“The Australian Consulate in Bali will facilitate the return to Australia of the teenager’s remains, in close consultation with his family, Indonesian authorities and funeral directors in Bali and Australia,” a foreign office spokesman told AFP.
Friends who had been holidaying with Flannery were also being offered support, he added.
Flannery was out celebrating on the well-known Kuta strip when he received the electric shock at about 3:00 am, according to local media reports.
“I heard he went up against a pole and there was a live wire up against it,” his mother, Cheryl, told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
“He was being electrocuted and his friends thought he was playing a joke.”
The teenager graduated from school last week and his mother said she had been “so stressed out” about the trip, his first overseas, but he was “very excited” and sent her a message on Thursday saying he had been having a great time.
Some passing Australian lifeguards who saw the jolt rushed to his rescue but he was unable to be revived, the Telegraph said.
“This wasn’t what I was worried about, you don’t think about something as simple as leaning on a pole,” Flannery’s mother told the newspaper.
“You can’t imagine it happening in Australia.”