Investigators are looking into the deaths of three residents of a village in the republic of Chuvashia who suffocated in a grain storage tank.
Investigators said that at 7:00 p.m. in Nizhnyaya Kumashka, the bodies of a woman, 49, and her son and daughter, aged 19 and 23, were found by a neighbor, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Preliminary reports indicate that the mother was the first to go into the tank before being found unconscious by her two children. They then died attempting to save her, RBC Daily reported.
The family's death was likely to have been caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, reports said.
Decaying grain held in the unventilated tank would have caused the highly toxic gas to build up in large quantities, quickly incapacitating anyone who came into contact with it.
