A man picked up a pressure washer to clean a car in a yard in Studeničani. He collapsed on the ground. He was taken to the Mother Teresa hospital complex and died there. He was 35.

According to the police bulletin, the case was reported to the Skopje Interior Ministry department on 16 September at around 11:40. H.B. (35) from Studeničani came into the yard of a house in the village, owned by A.S. (56), took the pressure washer and started cleaning the vehicle. At one point he collapsed. Initial suspicions are that the cause was electrocution.

An emergency medical team transported him to the Mother Teresa clinical complex. Despite the assistance given, he died. A doctor pronounced him dead, and on the instructions of a public prosecutor the body was sent for an autopsy at Forensic Medicine to establish the exact cause.

The autopsy will say what exactly happened. But even without it, the story is familiar to the point of tedium: a live appliance, water, an extension cord, a yard. A combination repeated every weekend in thousands of yards across the country, and one that almost never ends this way - until one time it does.

There are no official statistics published regularly on electrocutions in domestic settings, and no campaign to explain why earthing is not just a formality in the building paperwork. Pressure washers are sold everywhere, they cost about as much as one large utility bill, and nobody asks the buyer to understand what they are doing when they plug one into wiring as old as the house.

Until then this stays what it is in the bulletin - one line, three initials and one age.