Parents Release Photo Taken by Teen Electrocuted in Tub

Her final message showed phone extension cord
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 17, 2017 1:20 AM CDT
Updated Jul 17, 2017 6:16 AM CDT
Parents Release Electrocuted Teen's Final Message
This was Madison Coe's final message.   (Lovington Police Department)

The last message sent by 14-year-old Madison Coe before she was electrocuted in the bathtub shows the tragic mistake that killed her. "When you use and (sic) extension cord so you can plug your phone in while you're in the bath," the teen from Lovington, NM, wrote to a friend, sending a picture of the cord connection on top of a towel. But despite the precautions, Madison was apparently unaware that there was fraying on part of the cord, NBC 12 reports. Officials say she was killed after touching a frayed section while she was in the water. Investigators believe her phone was never immersed in the water.

According the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Lovington Police Department, the cord had been plugged into a non-grounded outlet with no circuit-interrupting safety mechanism, the New York Daily News reports. Family members released her final message to help raise awareness of the danger. Her father, firefighter and EMT Logan Coe, tells Inside Edition that Madison often took her phone into the bathroom to listen to music while she was in the tub. "Whenever I talked to Madison about it, she said, 'Dad, it's outside the tub,'" he says. A GoFundMe campaign to help the family has now raised more than $20,000. (More electrocution stories.)

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