http://thecouriermail.com.au/common/story_page/0,3533,665270%255E954,00.html

Fumes kill six after gas alarm turned off Christine Jackman in New York 10may00

A DOCTOR, who disconnected his household carbon monoxide detector because the alarm kept going off, came home after a night shift to find his daughter, parents and three other people dead from the poisonous gas.

Neighbours in the affluent Long Island community of Roslyn Heights called police after seeing Dr Andrei Kranz sobbing in his front yard as he cradled his two-year-old daughter's pyjama-clad body on Sunday morning.

When investigators arrived, they discovered a real-life house of horrors, with Dr Kranz's elderly parents, his daughter's nanny and two house guests entombed inside after being poisoned by the odourless gas.

Dr Kranz, 46, told police he had turned the carbon monoxide detector off because the alarm had been going off so often he thought it must be malfunctioning.

But the detector had correctly identified that carbon monoxide levels had grown to potentially lethal levels inside the home after an air conditioner became clogged and began sucking in fumes from a natural gas heater, instead of fresh air from outside.

"The air conditioner was causing a backdraft, sucking the air down the flue of the heater and recirculating it throughout the house," police spokesman Sgt Robert Edwards said yesterday.

Investigators had ruled out foul play, he said.

-- Maya (Maya@eck.ist), May 09, 2000

Answers

Why would somebody disconnect the alarm?????? Did this man have no common sense here? This is very sad because the whole purpose of the alarm is to alert the family.

This story bothers me so I was hoping somebody could give some comments about this.

-- Maya (Maya@eck.ist), May 10, 2000.

I can tell you this...there are damn few Drs that have any common sense. They as a group got in the wrong line when brains were given out. And the better Doctor they are, the less horse sense they seem to have. Taz

-- Taz (Tassie123@aol.com), May 10, 2000.

I disconnected his heart monitor because it kept beeping, I'm sorry, I know that you will miss him.

-- Doctor Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), May 10, 2000.

Sad, but another example of survival of the fittest. I sure hope that he doesn't father any more kids.

-- Charles Darwin (survival@of.the.fittest), May 10, 2000.