Six legal migrants from Uzbekistan fell into an abandoned well one by one, while trying to help each other out in the southern Volgograd region, local law enforcement agencies said on Tuesday.
One of the Uzbek migrants fell into a well in the field in which they were working late Monday, which had some three meters of “weather fallout” at the bottom, a spokeswoman for the local branch of the Investigative Committee said.
Co-workers tried to get him out but the improvised rescue mission went spectacularly wrong, with five of them also falling into the well, trying to get the first man out, the report said.
One of them drowned, while two more were put into intensive care in a hospital in the nearby city of Volzhsky, the spokeswoman said. She added that the remaining three workers were in “acceptable condition,” but did not elaborate.
It remained unclear who got the workers out. Regional police did not touch on the matter in its own press release, which also noted that the well, located on the premises of a former pig farm, was filled with an unspecified “toxic liquid with an acrid smell” that poisoned the six men.
