Japan woman killed in golf course sinkhole plunge
A Japanese woman playing golf with her family died in a freak
accident when the greens under her feet collapsed and she plunged into a
five metre (16 feet) deep cavern, police said Friday.
A golf course official said the hollow space just below the lawn may
have been formed by springtime mountain snow melt flowing through soils
below the golf course fairway on Japan's far-northern island of
Hokkaido.
Local authorities were investigating Thursday's deadly accident,
which happened as the woman was playing golf with her husband and two
children.
"We heard from firefighters that ... all of a sudden she fell into
the hole in front of her 10-year-old son," a local police official told
AFP. The woman, Takae Gassho, 38, from Sapporo, was dead when emergency
officials pulled her from the hole at the Le Petaw Golf Club, which had
only reopened the previous weekend after the winter season.Officials
believed she may have lost consciousness in the fall and then drowned in
a puddle of water at the bottom of the cavern, where the hole was more
than three metres wide, reports said. TOKYO, AFP |