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NASHVILLE ? A Tennessee restaurant owner was found dead after apparently accidentally locking himself inside a walk-in cooler, Fox 17 reports.

47-year-old Jay Luther was found early Monday by an employee at Germantown Cafe East, the restaurant Luther co-owned.

Police say the restaurant had lost power Friday, so the employees had placed food inside the cooler along with dry ice to keep it cool. When the power came back on Sunday, Luther apparently went inside the cooler to retrieve it and became trapped.They say it appears a button opening the cooler from the inside may have been broken.

Authorities say Luther may have died from carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of the dry ice.

Family members tell Fox 17 Luther was a family-oriented man who had a passion for cooking.

?Cooking was his passion it was his life and he passed away doing what he liked to do he was getting ready to prepare the next meal," Luther's brother-in- law, Peter Ruf told Fox 17.

source

From working in a supermarket many moons ago I can confirm that this is entirely plausible, particularly in the old style "refrigerated container" type jigs. The button inside the freezer used to frequently fail. We had a guy stuck in there for an hour and he looked like Jack Frost by the time we realised he was missing. Lucky he had his freezer kit on from working on the shop floor.

What a bad design when it can have obvious safety implications. Why even have locks on a Freezer, just have a normal door handle, and if security is required make an external lock which is not integrated with the door mechanism.

If he was aware that the inside switch was broken, then I guess it's his own fault for not getting it fixed since he was the owner.

I'm also guessing that the Freezer would act as a Faraday cage so mobile phone's won't work.

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