A local coroner’s office is looking into the bizarre death of a cryotherapy center manager in Henderson, NV. Reports say the 24-year-old employee was “frozen to death.”
Reports in Las Vegas media say Chelsea Ake-Salvacion died in a cryotherapy chamber. She’d been a manager at Rejuvenice, a business that provides facials and whole-body cryotherapy which involves brief exposure to air temperatures as low as minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit. The treatments are promoted as ways to help rehabilitation after injury.
On Oct. 19, Ake-Salvacion was working as the center’s night supervisor. She was alone at the time. The last video of her taken inside the business shows her walking toward the back of the center.
Her body was found when the business opened the next morning. Nevada OSHA officials say Ake-Salvacion may have been in the chamber 10 hours before she was found. The Clark County, NV, coroner hasn’t determined the exact cause and manner of death. Some lab results could take six to eight weeks.
A friend told a Las Vegas TV station that Ake-Salvacion “froze to death” in a cryochamber. Her uncle told the Review Journal that the coroner said her death happened in seconds.
Her uncle says investigators are looking into gases she may have inhaled as well as the chamber’s mechanics.
He also said a Rejuvenice employee told the family it wasn’t unusual for employees to use the machines on their own with no supervision.
Nevada OSHA isn’t investigating because it appears Ake-Salvacion used the chamber for personal purposes outside of business hours.
In a statement, Rejuvenice says it’s going to re-examine company procedures.
And despite reports that employees used the machines on their own without supervision, the statement from the company says, “Guests and employees are always supervised during the entirety of the treatment to ensure their safety.”
Rejuvenice’s website says, “All devices are equipped with numerous safety features and doors are never locked, which allows clients to stop treatment instantaneously at any time.”
Ake-Salvacion’s family says it will be difficult to deal with losing a loved one in such a bizarre manner.
(Update, Oct. 28, 2015, 10:45 a.m.): Local media in Nevada now report that the state’s Business and Industry Division placed a stop-work order on two Rejuvenice locations, including the one where Ake-Salvacion died. Authorities say they found the business operating without workers’ comp insurance.
