Youth dies in internet cafe during online gaming binge, staff spots him 30 hours after his death

The cafe’s boss said that the deceased man was a regularly visited the cafe and he appeared healthy. The man often spent about six hours during each of his visits.

(Representational image)

New Delhi: A shocking incident has come to light from China’s Wenzhou, Zhejiang province where a 29-year-old man’s lifeless body was left unattended at an internet cafe for 30 hours. The employees of the cafe thought the man was fast asleep and they didn’t bother to wake him up.

Interestingly, the man, who frequented the cafe, died during an extended gaming session, and his death went unnoticed. He went into the cafe on June 1. It was only on June 3, at 10 pm, that an employee at the cafe suspected something wrong and called the police.

The staff noticed the man lying there. He tapped him on the arm and then found that his body was cold, according to Jimu News portal.  The man, whose identity was not released publicly, had earlier left the cafe at 6am on June 2 to get breakfast, a South China Morning Post report said. “Based on the breakfast residuals left on the desk, he did not have lunch on June 2. He possibly died suddenly on the morning of June 2,” a police officer told Jimu News portal.

Chen, the deceased man’s brother-in-law, was alarmed how his passing away could go unnoticed for so long. “He sat in an open area instead of a closed partition. There should have been employees checking on him and noticing his strange behaviour,” Chen said.

The cafe’s boss said that the deceased man was a regularly visited the cafe and he appeared healthy. The man often spent about six hours during each of his visits, he pointed out, adding that the two staffers on duty at the time did not realise the man had “slept” for such an extended period of time. Local police are probing the incident.

In 2015, a 32-year-old man was found dead in an Internet cafe in Taiwan after a three-day gaming binge. In 2022, a 19-year-old man died in China soon after drinking a cold drink after he had played a basketball game.