A butcher in Banteay Meanchey’s Sisophon district died on Tuesday of convulsions his co-workers say was caused by receiving a nasty pig bite, although the man’s wife maintained the wound was unrelated to the cause of death.
According to O’Ambel commune police chief Chhem Vuthy, 41-year-old Kem Thuon was a well-known butcher at the Kampong Svay slaughterhouse and was reportedly bitten on the calf by a 75-kilogram pig on Monday and did not seek medical attention, instead treating his wounds with wine and a poultice of tobacco.
On Tuesday morning, Vuthy continued, Thuon tried to work with swollen hands, then suffered convulsions before dying en route to a private clinic that evening. “Workers at the slaughterhouse believed that the death of Kem Thuon [was] caused by the biting, since the pig’s teeth are not clean and [are] harmful,” Vuthy said.
However, Thuon’s 46-year-old wife, Seang Pov, maintained that her husband had been bitten before with no consequences, and had a history of seizures. “According to the doctor at the private clinic, my husband died of a heart attack . . . not because of the pig bite,” she said.
