This is as horrible as it sounds.
A woman in China's Henan Province dropped her $300 cellphone into a pit toilet (think: outhouse), and her husband was nice enough to crawl into the pool of fecal matter to retrieve her device. But, once he was in there, he was overwhelmed by the fumes coming from excrement, and fainted. Then, his mother climbed into the pit to save him, but she, too, succumbed to the stench, and lost consciousness shortly after. Then the man's wife, the one who dropped the phone, climbed into the pit and fainted as well. In the commotion, the woman's father-in-law and two of their neighbors became trapped in the pit trying to rescue them.
While they were able to get everyone out in a matter of minutes, they had to wait over an hour for an ambulance to arrive, and the husband and his mother died.
(Note: with the amount of fecal matter in a large pit, methane gas can build up without proper ventilation, and can suffocate someone, as it did here.)
[via Gawker]
