Kite string slashes man’s neck in HCMC

Nguyen Van Luy, 27, was taken to a hospital with long cuts on the neck and arms, a hospital representative said Tuesday.

On Monday afternoon, Luy was riding a motorbike near Thu Thiem 2 bridge that connects downtown District 1 with Thu Thiem peninsula, when a kite string entangled around his neck, causing him to fall off the bike.

Luy’s wife, Tham, was riding a motorbike behind him, and so stopped to check on her husband. She saw that the kite string was still embedded inside his neck.

Some people at a food stall nearby rushed to help the couple, using knives to cut the string. Luy was then taken to the hospital about 5 km away.

“The kite was flying low, causing the string to hover above the road, causing the accident,” Tham said.

In the past few years, an empty land plot near Thu Thiem urban area has become a popular site to fly kites in the afternoon. Some people fly kites near the road and electric poles, posing risks of accidents.

People fly kites near Thu Thiem 2 Bridge in HCMC, May 10, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

In March last year, a 32-year-old woman riding her motorbike in the area also had her neck slashed by a kite string, resulting in a 12 cm-long injury.

Nguyen Van Kien, chairman of the Thu Thiem Ward People’s Committee, said authorities often remind people not to fly kites, even seizing kites and fining people for disrupting order near roads. But it was impossible to deal with them all as there were “thousands of people flying kites.”

“When we go check on an area, people who were flying kites there would retract their kites, and continued to fly them once we left,” Kien said, adding that the ward has blocked certain entrances into the area and ramped up monitoring measures.