Cold Victims During Romantic Weekend: Two Young People Die of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning in Their Rental Apartment

On September 15, 2024, a man and a woman were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in a home in Val-d'Oise. The couple had rented the home for the weekend and turned on the heating to cope with the cold snap that has been raging in France for several days.

The firefighters' detection device detected alarming levels of carbon monoxide within seconds. On Sunday, a man and a woman aged 29 and 28 were found dead in the apartment they were subletting for the weekend in Enghien-les-Bains, reports La Gazette du Val-d’Oise.

Two inert bodies in the apartment

The couple were spending the weekend in an apartment in the village, which, like much of France, is experiencing a significant drop in temperatures. Which is why they had to turn on the heating.

However, on Sunday, the tenant of the property was no longer able to contact his subtenants, so he contacted the fire brigade to make sure everything was okay. The latter, upon arriving on site, discovered the bodies of the two twenty-somethings, also noting a significant quantity of carbon monoxide in the air.

Alarming amount of CO

It seems that the cause of deaths is this odorless and invisible gas, which is released from certain devices heating. The fire department's carbon monoxide detector indicated a level of 600 ppm (parts per million) of the gas in the ;air of the apartment. Normally, the World Health Organization says, this rate should not exceed 0.2 ppm. From 400 ppm, it is fatal.

According to our colleagues, it is a boiler malfunction that is the cause. A police investigation has been opened in order to to clear up the matter.