The wife of the Texas man who was fatally electrocuted in a hot tub at a Mexican resort last week recalled his haunting final words — and how she nearly died trying to save him.
Lizzette Zambrano was with her husband, Jorge Guillen, and dozens of other family members when he made the fatal decision to get into the hot tub at the Sonoran Sea Resort in Puerto Peñasco.
“The last thing I remember him saying is ‘oh s—t,’” Zambrano told “Good Morning America.”
“It’s the same time I felt the first electric shock, and it happened over and over and over. I didn’t hear him again,” she recalled.
Zambrano, 35, also suffered life-threatening injuries as she tried to save her husband. She was pulled out of the water without a pulse and rushed to a hospital in the US.
She woke up hours later, and overheard a nurse telling her colleague “‘her husband didn’t make it.’”
“I feel that this could have been prevented. I still can’t believe it. A very good man was taken away,” Zambrano said.
Zambrano is now suing the Sonoran for wrongful death, citing what she believes was faulty wiring that sent a live electrical current into the water.
“I want somebody to take accountability for what happened to my husband and myself,” Zambrano said tearfully.
Frantic vacation goers tried desperately to pull the couple to safety – but were mostly hampered by the ongoing electrical shocks, harrowing video footage from the scene showed.
“A lot of people jumped in, but they kept jumping out because the shocks were so strong,” Zambrano said.
The bystanders were prevented from pulling Guillen to safety because of the “the metal from the objects carried the electrical current and began shocking the rescuers,” according to the wrongful death suit.
Zambrano’s lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages from Casago, the facilitator of their vacation rental, ABC noted.
“Jorge was being electrocuted and drowned under water for 10 minutes,” the claim alleged, noting that the defendants did not try to engage the jacuzzi’s emergency shut off.
Casago, however, has denied all responsibility for the tragedy.
“The Sonoran Sea is a condo resort and the homeowners association is responsible for all common areas, including the maintenance of the swimming pool, hot tubs, and grounds,” they said in a statement.
“Casago, a vacation rental company, is not involved in any management or maintenance of the resort.”
But Zambrano’s lawyer, Tej Paranjpe, insisted that the company’s culpability was obvious.
“What policies, policies and procedures do they have in place? And what’s the point of those policies and procedures if they’re not doing anything to enact them?” he questioned.
