Teen electrocuted while taking apart unplugged computer

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2012/10/09/14321140-teen-electrocuted-while-taking-apart-unplugged-computer?lite

By Rosa Golijan
Oct. 9, 2012

In an activity familiar to any kid with a passion for electronics, the life of a 16-year-old boy in Shawnee, Kan., was cut short last month while he was taking apart a computer, stripping it for parts to build another.

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This boy died while doing what he loves and what he'd done so very often — dismantling a computer — Capt. Tennis told TODAY.com. He'd done this often enough to know what he's doing and how to do it safely, the police officer said. Unfortunately, this last time he happened to get too close to the device's power supply. Maybe he was careless this once, maybe he was distracted, maybe he was just unlucky.

It's not known what exactly happened. We simply know that the boy's father arrived at home to find his child dead.

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Kyle Wiens, co-founder of repair site iFixit, echoes Capt. Tennis. "I don't think disassembling just a computer is a risk," he told TODAY.com. "Power supplies are a sealed box inside the computer that have additional high voltage stickers and warnings on them."

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But Wiens emphasizes that "millions of people have built computers without anything like this happening."

"When stories like this happen, it's easy to become afraid of things we don't understand. But the future of our society depends on young tinkerers experimenting and getting excited about engineering," Wiens says. "Rather than telling people not to disassemble electronics, we should be teaching them about electricity and how to work with capacitors safely."