German teen floods club toilet in futile hunt for lost mobile phone

A German teen who lost his mobile phone in a pond tried to get it back by draining the water and pumping it into a nearby toilet but caused major damage when the water flooded the tank and sent the waste spewing, a local newspaper reported.

"I thought two pumps would drain enough of the water from the pond so I could find my cell phone," the 16-year-old German from Klein Hesepe told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper. "I knew the phone was probably dead but wanted to get the data card back with the numbers, pictures and videos of my friends."

The pond contained 1.8 million litres of water and the local toilet had a 1,000-litre tank. The teenager wrongly thought the toilet was connected to the sewage system. The water overwhelmed the tank and sent sewage flooding out across a fishing club.

"It almost worked," the teenager told the newspaper.