There are two deaths to report in northern Belize tonight – one child who died by accident, and one man who was killed.
We start with the tragic death of seven-year-old Jacob Dueck who was killed at a rice processing plant in Blue Creek yesterday evening. The owner of the grain facility Peter Remphel confirms that three children were playing in what is known as the dump bin – which holds 30 tonnes of rice. Yesterday, the bin had half that, 15 tonnes, which is still a lot.
They were playing but no one knew they were in there – and the workers turned on the "augur" – which is like a giant corkscrew that feeds rice down into a cleaning machine. That's when the three boys – all relatives of the workers and owners – started to be pulled down into the tones of rice like quicksand. At 5:45 Jacob Dueck was pulled under, and resurfaced briefly screaming for help. All the workers tried to get him out but he was buried beneath tonnes of Rice as the augur had pulled everything down. It took them 45 minutes to find him at 6:30 but by the time they did he was already dead. It is believed that he suffocated.
Dueck was the son of one of the workers.
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