The Sarco suicide pod has been used for the first time, its creators have confirmed, with an American woman aged 64 believed to be the first person to have died in the device ‘under a canopy of trees’ in Switzerland.
Police in northern Switzerland said that several people were detained on Monday, and that prosecutors had opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.
The ‘Sarco’ suicide capsule is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, according to its creators. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.
Prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton were informed by a law firm that an assisted suicide involving use of the Sarco capsule had taken place Monday near a woodland cabin in Merishausen, police said.
The woman who died in the capsule had reportedly been suffering with ‘a very serious illness that involves severe pain’ and had wished to die for ‘at least two years.’