Following the inexplicable deaths of a groom and six wedding guests in the community on Saturday, the rural hamlet of Eka Utara in Adani, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, has been rocked.
News reporters discovered that five other patients, including the bride, were being treated at an unnamed local hospital.
It was also learned that the victims were on their way home from a wedding ceremony at Obollo-Afor in Enugu State's Udenu Local Government Area when they began to perish.
Food poisoning was being suspected, according to a person in the Adani community who begged to remain anonymous.
The source added that other individuals believe the victims passed away after breathing carbon dioxide from a power generator moved onto the veranda of a home where they were staying as it rained after the wedding ceremony.
According to the source, an autopsy will be performed on the dead bodies to determine the precise cause of the deaths.
The source said: “I learned that the victims, who returned from Obollo-Afor where they attended a wedding, started dying mysteriously. I was equally told that the mysterious deaths might have been caused by food poisoning while others are saying that it might be caused by a generator fume, which was taken to the veranda of a house where they stayed when it was raining.
“There is also a suspicion that the guests died of the effect of an insecticide, which was sprayed to rid the room of mosquitoes. We are really in a state of confusion now. It is only an autopsy that would determine what killed them.”
Newsmen gathered that it was a neighbour, who had gone to receive the new bride that noticed how the victims were lying helplessly on the floor and alerted others who joined him to take them to hospitals.
Though, the spokesperson for Enugu State Police Command, Daniel Ndukwe, could not confirm the report because he told newsmen that he was in a church service, one of the doctors, who received some of the victims in his hospital, confirmed that five of them have died in his facility. He said he could not ascertain the actual number of the casualties because others who were affected by the incident died in other hospitals.