Des Plains, IL (GlossyNews) — A Park Ridge, IL wedding party turned to disaster when an iPhone user died and three more suffered minor burns after the man inadvertently opened a volatile combination of iPhone apps. Ray Lipton, 35, of Elmhurst was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Ray was showing me his new ‘Gas Pump’ app and it seemed to be working fine until the pump started overfilling the gas tank,” Tanya Damperling, Lipton’s date, sobbed as she recalled the terrible accident.
“There was gas all over the place and Ray was doing his best to turn the pump off, but the ‘Drop your cigarette and squash it with your foot’ app opened up instead. Then I saw this flash and his whole body ignited. It was just like in the movies watching the cigarette drop in slow motion. I tried to run away.”
But Tanya didn’t get far enough before the explosion engulfed Lipton’s entire body and her right arm leaving three large blisters. “Everyone was screaming. And my arm, it hurt really bad.”
One iPhone user managed to extinguish the fire with his ‘Fire Extinguisher’ app, but by then Lipton was not breathing. That’s when several other iPhone users and even one Google Mobile user went to work with several attempts to save Lipton’s life.
Tim Spencer used his ‘PA Announcer’ app to ask if anybody had the very rare ‘Doctor in the house’ app, but no one answered with their own ‘PA Answerer’ app.
“I tried my new ‘Oxygen Pump Over the Face’ app, but since his heart stopped, it was clear he needed more. I was scrolling like there was no tomorrow, but I didn’t have any of the right app’s to get it started again,” explained Phil Berry, a clean air advocate.
“First I tried ‘Defibrilator 1.1’, but then I remembered I had just downloaded ‘Defibrilator Version 2.0’ so I tried it. His body was bouncing pretty high off the floor, but it was to no avail,” sobbed Gina Ramone, a medical student.
While Phil and Gina used their app’s to try to resuscitate Lipton, Mary Phipps used her ‘Butter Burn’ app from Google Mobile to spread butter over the three other victims’ burns. “My grandmother told me if you burn your skin, the best thing to do is spread butter on it. I’m just so glad I could help somebody.”
Once the crowd started to become a potential obstacle to the rescue attempts, Heather Sampson used her ‘Nothing To See Here’ app to get them to disperse while John Reilly used his ‘Caution Tape’ app to create a boundary.
When it was clear that Lipton could not be revived, Fred Russell used his ‘Victim’s Chalk Outline’ app to mark his position.
An investigation into the ‘Gas Pump’ app found that it was only in the Beta stage of development, a stage where software is not yet fully tested. A disclaimer on the company’s website clearly states that the download could be potentially dangerous in certain situations, but as of today, it has been downloaded more than 12,000 times.
Since this freak accident there has been an unusual rise in the number of downloads of the ‘Disaster Counseling’ app in the Chicago area.
The irony of this whole incident is that everyone was too busy scrolling for helpful app’s to actually call 911. One witness noted when told of this, “I don’t think they’ve come out with an app for that yet, but I think it’s a great idea and I would download it in a heartbeat.”