A TEENAGER has choked to death on a piece of fruit after it became lodged in his throat.
The 19-year-old collapsed to the ground after eating a segment of a mandarin as he walked along the street with a friend in Spain’s Costa Blanca.
The freak tragedy occurred at around 2:45pm on Friday afternoon near the seafront promenade in Playa de San Juan just north of Alicante.
Police and paramedics were quickly mobilised to try and save the young Spaniard.
He was tragically pronounced dead after several attempts to resuscitate him.
An autopsy is currently being carried out to confirm the man’s cause of death.
Choking is among the leading causes of accidental death in Spain.
Around 3,000 deaths are recorded annually.
In October last year British grandmother Ceri Ball, 74, died after choking on a piece of steak in a restaurant in the coastal town of Peniscola near Valencia.
Her daughter Lisa Lisseman said Ceri, from Newport, Wales, was quickly seen by paramedics and rushed to hospital.
She died after being deprived of too much oxygen.
Lisa told Wales Online: “We are all in total agony. My mum was the glue of our family. She had such a kind heart and she was so proud of her family.“
Retired pension fund manager Kenneth Edward Cooper also died after choking on his lunch on a cruise off the Spanish coast in April last year.
The ship docked and the 83-year-old, from Stow Bardolph, Norfolk, was taken to a hospital in the south-west city of Cadiz where he died on April 11.
In 2019, a freak tragedy occurred when a Dutch tourist choked to death after swallowing his car keys while on holiday in Barcelona.
Investigations were unable to prove how the 37-year-old got the keys trapped.
