MORE DARWIN AWARDS!
As you may already know, the Darwin Awards are for those nominees who
contribute to the gene pool by dying in spectacularly stupid ways.
DARWIN AWARD - POTENTIAL 1999 AWARD CANDIDATES:
In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in
two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide
sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker,
who "totally zoned out when he ran," according to his wife,
accidentally jogged off a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug
into the sand caved in as he sat inside it.
Beachgoers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun,
or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair
at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed,
burying him beneath 5 feet of sand.
People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels,
trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA,
but could not reach him.
It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free
him while about 200 people looked on.
Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.
In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he
fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed
in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his
skull as he hit the floor.
According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20,
was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23,
who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak
vest that Berrena was wearing.
Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville,
Del, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a
revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the
trigger.
In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel Kolta,
27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a
tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.
DARWIN AWARD - HONORABLE MENTIONS
In Guthrie, Okla, in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede
with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off
a rock near the hole, and hit his pal Antonio Martinez in the head,
fracturing his skull.
In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a
propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second
floors of his house.
Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of
dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 AM, the
bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to
see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the
window was closed.
AND THE WINNER:
PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zoo-keeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed
his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more
than a bushel of berries, figs,
and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly,
and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop!
Investigators say that the ill-fated Friedrich, 46,
was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema
when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud.
"The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked
Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground,
where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant
continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him,"
said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern.
"With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung
for at least an hour before a watchman came along,
and during that time, the keeper suffocated.
It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that happen." |
