Legacy MattersMarried only five days, 26-year-old Anthony Rankins was shot and killed in a domestic dispute by his 45-year-old wife who was a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence.
Woman charged with killing husband is lobbyist
Even though they had the equipment to save her, because of a bureaucratic memo, firefighters stood by and just listened to her cries for help. When the mountain rescue team was called in, they brought up the woman who died of a heart attack.
Firefighters left woman in mine shaft for six hours due to 'health and safety concerns'
An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.
A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public.
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It would have been possible to pull Ms Hume up had it not been for the memo.
After he crashed into a power pole, he relieved himself and didn't see the live wire in the roadside ditch.
Washington man electrocuted by urinating on power line
1 killed in whale attack at SeaWorld’s Shamu Stadium
Park guest Victoria Biniak told Local 6 that the trainer was a veteran of SeaWorld and had just finished explaining to the audience the show they were about to see.
At that point, Biniak said, the whale came up from the water and grabbed the woman.
"He was thrashing her around pretty good. It was violent,'" Biniak told Local 6.
The whale "took off really fast in the tank, and then he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing around, and one of her shoes flew off."
She said sirens went off and everyone was forced to leave the stadium.
It happened during a Dine with Shamu event
Just an amazing, horrific, inspiring story by Matt Labash called Love Among the Ruins about the amazing Father Rick Frechette in Haiti.
Every Thursday—since long before the earthquake—Frechette and a band of Haitian volunteers trek to the city morgue and claim the nameless dead, who lie naked in bloated heaps on a blood-streaked concrete floor. “You’ve heard of Tuesdays with Morrie,” Frechette smiles, “this is Thursdays with the Krokmo” (a Creole pejorative term for undertaker. It translates as the “death hook,” meaning the show is over). The place is jammed and the dead often piled seven or eight high. The workers there are so inured to the stench and spectacle, that Frechette has seen a morgue attendant slaloming on roller blades around the bodies and workers eating their lunch while sitting on stacks of cadavers as though on breaktime in the office kitchenette.
In Haiti, even before the quake, dead bodies were nothing more than background music—as commonplace as they are unnoticed. If they didn’t end up in the stark death-cave that is the general hospital morgue, they were burned in the streets on the spot where they died (a pragmatic hygiene concern). The decency and sentimentality that a better-developed society affords are luxuries here. Father Rick and his men gather the bodies themselves, packing them into makeshift coffins fashioned from supermarket cardboard boxes. They then truck them outside the city, up a sun-bleached highway that runs alongside the Caribbean Sea, to the rolling wastelands of Titanyen, which translates from Creole as the “fields of less than nothing.” A New Orleans-style Haitian jazz-funeral band—all horns and drums—plays graveside. Father Rick, an irreverent sort, calls them “The Grateful Dead.” Then he and his men plant the cardboard coffins in large holes dug by their own gravediggers, endowing their cargo in death with a tiny modicum of the dignity that eluded them in life.
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He’s been doing the morgue runs for 15 years, but has never gotten used to the smell. It makes him so sick, he brings along rum and cigarettes. “People ask me if I smoke,” he says. “Only on Thursdays.” The Haitians avail themselves of the goods, but for Frechette, they’re not optional. Without the spirit’s fumes and cigarette smoke chasing the smell of the dead out of his nostrils, he vomits, which his Haitian colleagues find amusing.
When he returned to Haiti right after the earthquake, there was an overflow crowd at the morgue, literally thousands of dead laid out in the street in front of it. “They were picking them up with backhoes and bucket-loaders, dumping them into trucks,” says Frechette, adding that the machines crunched the bodies against the walls in order to be able to scoop them. “They were hanging out the sides like crabs in a bucket. Really, really terrible. It was so shocking, so disgusting, I yelled, ‘Give me a cigarette!’ ”
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When I ask him how he could head back into the jaws of Haiti just a day after burying his mom, he tells me of her death. She knew it was happening, and she had time to prepare, had the best care, had lived a full life, and died with her family surrounding her. When he asked his mother why she wasn’t afraid, knowing she’d die, she told him that she “believes in God, and if she looks at the whole trajectory of her life, life has been very good, why start mistrusting it?” “I think the fuller your life is, the less death is a threat to you,” says Father Rick. “Empty people are scared to death to die.”
You would think there is no safer place than your home where ensconced on your couch you watch TV. Not always.
British couple killed watching TV after Spanish villa's roof collapses on them after 60 days of rain
A British couple were crushed to death when the roof of a farmhouse collapsed on them following a mudslide.
Expats Christopher Martin, 63, and his wife Christine, 64, were visiting friends at the remote country home in southern Spain.
They were buried under 6ft of rubble while sitting on a sofa watching television at the whitewashed farmhouse in the Andalusian village of Rubite.
Is that a good death, no way to go or a fitting death? I say no way to go.
"Stop stealing cars or you'll get yourself killed" said the mother to her son.
He didn't. He did. Along with three of his friends in a fireball crash.
The New York Times reports Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
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Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.
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Butch Albarracin, the owner of Center for Pop, a Manila-based singing school that has propelled the careers of many famous singers, was partial to what he called the “existential explanation.”
“ ‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”
A rampaging elephant kills a Long Island woman and the 1-year-old daughter she held in her arms
The family was hiking on a nature trail about 1 mile from the Castle Forest Lodge, where the family was vacationing, said the owner, Melia van Laar.
"The elephant emerged from the bush at full speed without any warning," van Laar said. "Everybody ran away, but the lady, burdened by the weight of the baby, perhaps, or in panic, was not able to run fast enough."
Officials identified the woman as Sharon Brown, 39, and said her daughter's name was Margaux. Brown, originally from Miller Place, LI, and her husband are listed as faculty members at the International School of Kenya. Friends and colleagues at the American-curriculum K-12 school held a memorial service yesterday.
Walking tours of Kenya's many national parks are common, though hikers are advised to have an armed guard with them if the park is known to have elephants, said Kentice Tikolo, a spokeswoman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.
"It was a lone elephant, and lone elephants can be quite dangerous," Tikolo said. "It probably felt quite threatened."
What a tragedy on a family outing. Condolences to her grieving family.
What a sad story, his poor family.
Man dies after slipping on ice while visiting his mother's grave on Christmas Day
A builder has died after slipping on an icy path while visiting his mother's grave on Christmas Day.
Jimmy Halpin, 54, suffered head and neck injuries after the fall at Urmston and was pronounced dead on arrival at Trafford General Hospital
His death comes just weeks after his wife Ann, 55, died of stomach cancer, and has left his children without parents.
A grand jury has indicted a 98-year-old woman on a second-degree-murder charge for allegedly killing her 100-year-old roommate in a dispute over the room they shared at a nursing home in Dartmouth.
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The motion filed in Superior Court details the relationship between the two elderly women and describes, how just a short distance from a nurses' station, Lundquist was allegedly able to strangle and suffocate Barrow that morning within a window of 20 minutes. Staff found her body at 6:20 a.m. under a bed sheet with a plastic bag tied loosely around her head.
"The defendant made statements prior to the victim's death that she would get the victim's bed by the window because she was going to outlive her," the motion said.
The night before staff found Barrow dead, she complained that Lundquist has placed a table at the foot of her bed that blocked her path to the bathroom, according to joint motion. A nurse's aide moved the table and Lundquist punched her. When staff discovered Barrow's body, the table had been moved back to the foot of her bed.
Solange Magano, a former Miss Argentina, left her twin eight-year-old girls at home in Cordoba when she traveled to Buenos Aires for buttock implants.
After the routine surgery called a gluteoplasty, she began having severe breathing problems and was rushed to the hospital where she died from a blocked lung artery after spending three days in intensive care.
Her close friend and fashion designer Roberto Piazza said the brunette had become obsessed with her looks as her successful modelling career approached its end.
He said: 'Solange was a girl who had everything. She lived the life of a goddess, she was the envy of everybody.
'Now she is dead because she wanted a slightly firmer behind.
'She died because of her obsession with beauty.'
Grotesque beyond belief.
Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'
Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment.
The jailed men have confessed to killing five people, but police suspect the number of victims is far higher, with 60 people reported missing in Huánuco this year alone. Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.
At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. "The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.
Police said they received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat, which exported the amber liquid to Europe as anti-wrinkle cream.
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The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest.
The suspects allegedly would sever victims' heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles, which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below. Members claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.
UPDATED
Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people. He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre.
But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie.
Wife, 28, bludgeoned millionaire husband, 76, to death with a giant pestle after he asked for a divorce
The young wife of a British millionaire who bludgeoned him to death after he asked for a divorce has been found guilty of murder.
Nigerian-born Kate Artori West, 28, smashed William West, 76, over the head with a giant pestle used in African cooking, then set him on fire before burying him in a sack.
Reports at the time suggest that Mr West could still have been alive when he was set on fire.
West has been jailed for life after a three-year long trial in Gambia this week. She was, however, spared the death penalty.
William West's charred body was found near the couple's luxury home on the Gambian coast in July 2006 just days into a holiday with his wife of six years.
Taylor Mitchell, 19, Musician, Killed by Coyotes
Up and coming Canadian musician Taylor Mitchell has died from wounds sustained from 2 coyotes. Taylor Mitchell was hiking alone on a trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia. People heard Mitchell's screams and called park rangers. The rangers did make it there in time
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The singer died on the way to the hospital from her wounds. The coyotes had bitten her many times and the paramedics said she was in critical condition when they found her and she had lost a lot of blood.
Taylor Mitchell was a new talent that was on the rise. Her debut CD is called "For Your Consideration". She had just turned 19 and gotten her driver's license. She loved the woods and appreciated the beauty of them. Taylor Mitchell was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award this year in the young performer of the year category.
The sad story becomes clearer. For some seeking rebirth, sweat lodge was end.
Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader, James Arthur Ray, a nationally known New Age guru, urged them to press on.
“There were people throwing up everywhere,” said Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who said she struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, a makeshift structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks.
Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray told the more than 50 people jammed into the small structure — people who had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert — that vomiting “was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn’t want, what it doesn’t need.” But by the end of the ordeal on Oct. 8, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals.
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About 90 minutes into the ceremony, Dr. Bunn said, someone yelled in the darkness that a woman had passed out just after Mr. Ray closed the tent door between rounds. Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray replied, “We will deal with that after the next round.”
By the end of the ceremony, two people, James Shore, 40, who Dr. Bunn said had dragged an ill woman out of the lodge and then returned, and Kirby Brown, 38, were near death; they died that evening. A third participant, Liz Neuman, 49, fell into a coma and died on Oct. 17.
Two victims, Kirby Brown, 38, and Liz Neumann, 49
Given the accounts of the survivors who said that Ray was intimidating and discouraged people from leaving, I hope that criminal charges are brought against him, if not manslaughter, at least criminally negligent homicide.
I suppose it is to be expected that many will continue to support Ray, but this is shocking.
On a conference call Mr. Ray held last week for sweat lodge participants, Dr. Bunn was shocked to hear one recount the comments of a self-described “channeler” who visited Angel Valley after the retreat. Claiming to have communicated with the dead, the channeler said they had left their bodies in the sweat lodge and chosen not to come back because “they were having so much fun.”
More from the Daily Mail - Sweat lodge survivor tells how guru 'caused three deaths'
People were vomiting in the stifling heat, gasping for air, and lying lifeless on the sand and gravel floor beneath them, according to participant Beverley Bunn.
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By the time people started collapsing, Bunn had already crawled to a spot near the opening of the sweat lodge, praying for the door to stay open as long as possible between rounds so that she could breathe in fresh air.
At one point, someone lifted up the back of the tent, allowing light into the otherwise pitch-black tent. Ray demanded to know where the light was coming from and who committed the 'sacrilegious act,' she explained.
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As it neared the end, Bunn said some participants found themselves physically and mentally unable to tend to those around them.
After the eighth round, Ray instructed them to exit the sweat lodge just has they had entered - going clockwise, a movement meant to symbolize being inside a mother's womb.
What followed was a triage situation with people laid out on tarps and water being thrown on them to bring down body temperatures.
Some people weren't breathing and had bloodshot eyes. One woman unknowingly walked toward the fire before someone grabbed her, Bunn said.
Shouts of 'we need water, we need water,' rang out. 'They couldn't fill up the buckets fast enough,' Bunn said.
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Ray was standing about 10 feet away, watching, Bunn said.
'He didn't do anything, he didn't participate in helping. He did nothing. He just stood there.'
A man whose body remained slumped on the balcony of a Marina del Rey apartment for four days before it was reported to authorities apparently committed suicide, authorities said Friday.
Neighbors told an RMG News camera crew that they noticed the body Monday but didn't call authorities until Thursday because they thought it was a Halloween dummy.
Tourists killed in hot-air balloon accident in China
A hot-air balloon has exploded and crashed in one of the most popular tourist spots in China, killing four Dutch tourists and injuring three people.
The group of five Dutch tourists and two balloon pilots had floated for about an hour over the dramatic karst hills that rise up around the town of Yangshuo.
As the balloon was preparing to land, it developed a leak, caught fire and crashed to the ground from a height of about 150 metres.
Anyone who is foolish enough to pay $9695 for the opportunity to become a "Spiritual Warrior' is Sedona, Arizona can't be expected to be smart enough to get out of the heat.
Two died, one is in critical condition and two others are in far condition after taking part in a sweat lodge ceremony
which lasted about two hours and was being hosted by James Arthur Ray, an author and spiritual self-help entrepreneur.
A sweat lodge is an enclosed structure in which heated rocks are doused with water to create steam and saunalike conditions. Adapted from Native American tradition, it is thought to help purify both body and spirit.
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The Associated Press reported that, eerily, Ray made this posting on his Twitter account just hours before the deaths: "Still in Spiritual Warrior ... for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?"
Via Ann Althouse, Instant Karma
"Yeah, my name is Stacy and I am driving toward Ontario, when a car went off into the median at mile marker 22"...
From a very credible-sounding 911 call. Link
Stacy is actually Melissa Farris, 35, of Caldwell, according to Caldwell Police Chief Chris Allgood. He says Farris made the call to 911, waited for paramedics to leave, then tried to slip under the closing bay door.
That attempt failed, and instead she got trapped and died.
Farris was a former worker at the paramedics station where she died Thursday. Her call appeared to be perfectly crafted to call paramedics away from the station.
The paramedics drove off looking for the nonexistent accident — as Farris — who, for whatever reason really wanted to get inside — lay dying under their door.
After seven years working at the Canyon County Paramedics in Idaho, Ferris left under apparently cloudy circumstances. They did get her out and she died in the hospital
She leaves behind a husband and two sons, both parents, two sisters and two grandparents. How sad for them all.
Father killed daughter in crash as he drove at 110 mph to 'teach her a lesson'.
'He was annoyed at being called out at short notice at that time of night. He was deliberately driving far faster than he should have been,' said prosecutor Ieuan Bennett.
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Kaylee was not wearing a seatbelt and she was hurled from the car when it struck a concrete bollard and flipped over.
She died of catastrophic head injuries. The father was in a coma for 12 days with permanent brain damage. Now he's in jail.
"Death by binge drinking is a disgusting, pointless way to way to die"
it's 9 pm on a Friday night and throughout Britain people just like him are drinking themselves into oblivion. The only difference is that he has stopped breathing.
His three friends dial 999 when they cannot wake him, but they have no idea just how serious it is.
As Lian Withers, a first-response paramedic with the West Midlands Ambulance Service, arrives, they roll their eyes and joke: 'He loves his lager.'
Grandmother died after being knocked over by zebra on once-in-a-lifetime safari in Kenya
A grandmother died after being knocked down by a zebra on a safari holiday in Kenya.
Eileen Whale, 77, was hit by the animal as it ran away after apparently being disciplined for trying to stick its nose into another holidaymaker's handbag.
She died of medical complications following the fall, an inquest heard today
Shopaholic died under her purchases
The body of an elderly shopaholic was found underneath a pile of clothing and other items after she died of natural causes, an inquest heard.
Joan Cunnane's bungalow was so crammed with purchases it took five visits to the house before she was found.
A fugitive couple who stole a yacht apparently starved to death after it was damaged in a storm.
The story of their slow, agonising death was detailed in a vivid diary found on board.
Sharon Arthurs-Chegini, 46, wrote: 'The lights are going out in my heart.
We have not eaten for four weeks. I dream of my mum's steak and kidney pie, roast dinner and sausage and mash.'
An inquest in Truro, Cornwall, was told that the former interior designer and her lover Peter Clarke, 49, had enjoyed a 'champagne and cocaine' lifestyle beyond their means.
They stole the yacht, the Skipper VII, while they were on the run in Portugal after skipping bail for a previous boat theft from Mylor harbour in Cornwall.
Months later, the Skipper was found adrift off the coast of Senegal, West Africa, with their bodies on board.
Too drunk to go home, a teacher passed out in a wheelie bin and was crushed to death in a rubbish truck.
A teacher who fell asleep in a wheelie bin after a pub crawl was crushed to death when it was emptied into the machinery of a refuse truck.
The body of Scott Williams was found among rubbish when the truck was emptied more than 24 hours later.
Mr Williams, 35, is thought to have climbed into the large communal bin - which is the size of a small skip - to sleep off an evening's drinking in Brighton.
Police were last night investigating the death of a man who fell into a vat of melted chocolate.
Factory worker Vincent Smith II toppled into the mix as he was filling the eight-foot deep tank with hot chocolate.
Detectives said the 29-year-old was dumping giant chunks of chocolate over the side when he was hit by a mixing blade, causing a fatal blow.
Three co-workers at Cocoa Services in Camden, New Jersey, rushed to turn off the machine. But by the time they could get to the unconscious man it was too late.
He had been in the chocolate – which was at a temperature of about 120 degrees – for about ten minutes by the time emergency crews managed to pull him out.
My condolences to the family who must hard to deal with the jokes about the manner of his death that was really horrible
He went into shock during a parachute jump
A British parachutist plunged 13,000ft to his death yesterday after he apparently went into a state of shock during freefall.
Police said Richard Taylor, 34, fell 'like a lead weight' after he did not open his parachute.
His automatic emergency chute failed to deploy when a line became caught on his arm.
He was on a beginners' course in Spain with four British friends when he died on his fifth jump.
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He had been in freefall for about a minute when he curled up into a ball, probably as a result of going into shock.
The instructor tried to catch him, but when someone is curled up that is impossible.
'The instructor gave hand signals telling him to open his chute, but he did not respond.'
'Eventually the instructor had to open his own parachute.
'Then the student´s automatic activation device attempted to open the emergency parachute.
'But because of the student´s position curled up in a ball, a line got caught on his arm and could not open properly.'
The coverage of and reaction to Michael Jackson's death has been so over the top, I feel no need and have no desire to add to it. Clearly a very troubled man and a tortured soul, he had a tragic life. May he rest in peace. I'm going to keep mine and leave the whole celebrity and media circus alone
I wonder along with David Warren
I found myself close-up with a lady of early middle-age, who was distraught at Jackson’s passing. I thought at first she was dressed as a clown (as were many who turned out at the UCLA Medical Center), but no, she was costumed as a bicycle courier. Her grief appeared genuine: I was glad not to have made the flip remark then in my mind. The sufferings of other people are real, and the fact we ourselves put little value on what they have lost does not change their suffering.
Notwithstanding, how can anyone — a grown woman in this case — possibly have allowed herself to become so emotionally engaged with a screen image, as the crowds do now, as the crowds did for Diana?
The answer can only be that the image has power. Among people deprived of the sheet-anchor of religious faith, such images have an extraordinary power. And at the root, that power is self-destructive.
The Anchoress sets you straight on why Jackson was an IDOL, not an ICON. An icon is a religious artifact; an idol can be anything. Don't be dumb and confuse the two
When it comes to untimely or unusual death, you can't beat the British press.
D-Day hero, 93, starved himself to death after care home 'refused to let him go home to his wife'.
Alfred Tonkin, 93, went on hunger strike when he was prevented from being reunited with his wife of 68 years, Joyce.
The great-grandfather, who lost a leg to a Nazi machine gunner, was initially admitted to hospital with a blood disorder.\
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But when social services became involved in his case they declared he was suffering from dementia and insisted a round-the-clock care package would have to be arranged before he could return home.
He was transferred to a care home and was still there four months later when he was rushed to hospital suffering from dehydration and malnourishment.
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On May 28, a GP wrote to social services to protest at the length of time it was taking for him to be reunited with his wife and recommend an immediate discharge.
She pointed out a psychiatric assessment in January had found Mr Tonkin was depressed in care and anxious to leave.
The letter went on to warn intense frustration over the delays had led to him refusing food.
Three days later Mr Tonkin was rushed back to Watford Hospital with renal failure but died after failing to respond to drips.
His son, who works for Royal Mail, added: 'My dad had no one to talk to in the home and he lost the will to live.
He got on the No.26 bus at about 12:30 am and twenty minutes later, CCTV footage shows him slumped over in his sight. The bus driver "forgot " about him when he left to go home for the night. The cleaners didn't clean the bus. So overnight, Pawel Modzelewski who had overdosed, lay dying or dead all night long on the upper deck of a London bus until the next morning when a passenger found him.
Wife found dead in wheelie bin may have been murdered Three years ago
Mrs Wallner was found after a neighbour spotted a foot sticking out of the bin in Cobham, Surrey. One theory is that she was killed before August 2006 and her body stored somewhere.
No one noticed she was missing!
An inquest heard evidence of the Lazarus syndrome man pronounced dead comes back to life for two days.
A man came back to life - like the Biblical Lazarus - half an hour after doctors told his family he had died.
Michael Wilkinson, 23, 'died' in hospital of a previously undiagnosed heart condition after his mother found him collapsed in bed.
Doctors failed to revive the roofer and pronounced him dead, and he was given the last rites.
But 30 minutes later medics found a pulse and told relatives he was actually alive.
There was no communication from the man who spent those last two days of his life in intensive care.
Man catches best friend's horror road death on camera as they race motorbikes at 170 mph.
Bowden, a car mechanic, had intended to take his son for a ride that day but Mr Prowse, his friend since school, arrived at his house and suggested they go for a ride.
Mr Prowse, ...then fitted his video camera to Bowden's petrol tank and the pair raced along the A30.
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With a camera strapped to his motorbike Fred Bowden followed Andrew Prowse as the pair broke the speed limit 30 times in just 20 minutes.
Bowden was still filming after 25 miles when his friend clipped a car with his Kawasaki ZX10R and was thrown under an oncoming camper van. Mr Prowse, 46, was decapitated and died instantly.
Flying wreckage from Bowden's motorcycle knocked Bowden off his own matching 1,000cc machine.
Bowden, a 42 year old father of 4, pled guilty to dangerous driving but escaped a jail term. His sentence was suspended and his license too for three years.
A Spanish burglar has died inside a chimney after becoming stuck during a break-in attempt.
The body of the 30-year-old man, identified by police as Ricardo CG, was discovered by the owner of the home in the town of Moron de la Frontera on Tuesday.
His hand and forearm could be seen sticking out the top of the chimney, local media reported.
It is not known how long the man was wedged inside the chimney before he died, but his mother had reported him missing last week and his body had already started to decompose.
A local businessman only used the property as a second home and could not identify how long the would-be thief had been stuck.
He made the shocking discovery after finding his gate broken into and bricks broken off the fireplace.
On a dream round the world voyage, Malcolm and Linda Robertson anchored their yacht off the coast of Thailand when, in the early hours of the morning, they were awakened by a commotion.
Malcolm went to check when he was beaten to death with a hammer and thrown overboard by three Burmese migrant workers.
They took Linda out of the cabin in which she was sleeping and tied her up in ropes below deck. They sailed the yacht through the night until the next morning when they loaded up a small dinghy with their loot
Linda managed to wriggle free of the ropes, outrunning the pirates and sailed to a nearby fishing vessel for help. The fishermen contacted the police who captured the three men still in the small dingy.
British man battered to death by Burmese teenage pirates
Too many pancakes kill Russian man
THE WINNER of a pancake-eating contest dropped dead after gorging himself on 43 of the cream and banana stuffed desserts.
Boris Isayev, 48, from west Russia, collapsed to his knees and died on stage after stuffing himself with pancakes in a competition to mark the end of the region’s ‘Pancake Week’.
"He had really enjoyed the pancakes but then he started foaming at the mouth and went down like a sack of stones," one witness said.
Onlookers tried to revive the man, but he died on the stage, reported the Sunday Mirror.
Witnesses apparently described Isayev as “the most active participant in the contest" adding that he "ate all the types of pancakes on offer and won fairly.”
The exact cause of death is not clear but doctors believe he choked after a piece of pancake got lodged in his throat.
Pinned to the metal grating of an MBtA escalator that clenched her scarf and hair, 82 year old Helen Jackson lay dying while many commuters walked past her to the exit.
Watching helplessly as a life slips away
commuters walked past her toward the exit, either unaware of the dire circumstances or unwilling to get involved.
A few good Samaritans intervened. One slammed the button that stopped the rising escalator. Another pleaded for any sort of help - scissors or even nail clippers to cut her free. Amid the muted chaos, a municipal security officer just outside the station radioed an emergency, then waited by his car for paramedics to arrive.
Moments mattered, and in the end, as one middle-aged man crouched at the top of the escalator, holding Jackson's hand while urging her to keep breathing, her grip loosened, her hand fell away, and she died. She was pinned so tightly to the escalator grating that the man couldn't fit his fingers between her scarf and her neck.
Condolences to her family. "She didn't have to go like that"
Some men might think this is a great way to die, but I call it no way to go. The man was only 28.
The women had bet mechanic Sergey Tuganov £3,000 that he wouldn’t be able to satisfy them both non-stop for the half-day sex marathon.
But minutes after winning the wager, the randy 28-year-old dropped dead with a heart attack, revealed Moscow police.
When I first read the story of the babies being swept out to sea on a gust of wind just when their father removed his hands from their buggy to speak to his female friend, I thought the father would never escape this tragedy.
Rebecca and Lewis Hopper had been tightly buckled into the three-wheel buggy when their father, Andrew, lost his grip as he strolled along a sea wall with a female friend.
The pushchair ran off the open walkway and plunged 15 ft into the icy waters.
As horrified onlookers watched, both adults then ran into the sea to try to save the children.
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This is the walkway along the sea at Folkestone, Kent, where these two babies were swept to sea.
But it got even worse when it was revealed that Lewis Hopper was kissing his mistress when he let go of the pram's handles.
A terrible tragedy in every way. Mercy on them all.
Yes, he was 80, with prostrate cancer and partially blind and deaf, and after going to his local hospital to get treatment for his anemia (three blood transfusions instead of the injection he expected), he decided to call for a taxi to take him home. The pay phone in the hospital was broken, so he decided to walk. After all, he didn't want to make a nuisance of himself by asking for transport, or even to stay a bit longer, maybe overnight.
Tragedy of patient 80 who died because he didn't want to be a nuisance.
An elderly man died after having to walk home following three blood transfusions because he couldn't call a cab from the broken hospital pay phone that staff had sent him to.
Retired civil servant Aplyn Wynn-Jones, 80, was physically sick after taking two hours to walk the one and a half miles to his house.
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Mr Storer said: 'He died from the well-recognised symptoms of overload, where the body cannot cope with the volume of blood.
'When we arrived, the look of panic on the man's face was appalling.
'His lungs had filled up with liquid and his organs were failing. He was clearly dying.
'I called a doctor who was outraged and said we must make an official complaint.
Transgender woman pleads guilty of exercising husband to death
An elderly Ohio man was "exercised to death" by his transgendered wife - who forced him to swim even as he gasped for breath, authorities said.
Christine Newton-John, 41, pleaded guilty last week to reckless homicide in the death of James Mason, 73, and could get five years in prison.
Cops said she was caught on video dragging her frail hubby around the pool in their apartment complex, stopping him from getting out 43 times.
"The man was exercised to death," Middlefield Police Chief Joseph Stehlik told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
"The video is bone-chilling. The whole case is very sinister. My personal feeling is that what she did was more intentional than reckless.
"This is a case that could just slip through the cracks."
It didn't because Stehlik's deputy became suspicious after Mason's June 2 heart attack, recalling that he'd investigated previous allegations of abuse.
A police officer noticed a surveillance camera above the pool and retrieved the tape - which showed Mason struggling to breathe during the marathon swim session.
When Kenneth Clarke, 59, and his wife flew from England to Florida for a vacation, they visited Discovery Park in Orlando where they swam in a pool made to look like a coral reef, alive with tropical fish.
Kenneth stubbed his toe on one of the rocks implanted with living coral.
What followed was a nightmare.
He was treated in intensive care in the U.S. before being flown back to Britain. Despite further intensive treatment and having both his legs amputated, he died from blood poisoning.
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Doctors in Manchester were forced to amputate his legs below the knee, but he died of multiple organ failure caused by Group B streptococcal septicaemia on August 8, just eight weeks after stubbing his toe.
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Mr Meadows told Mrs Clarke: 'This is an unusual set of circumstances made all the more difficult because it starts with a happy family holiday in a safe environment.
'If ever there someone who could be described as unlucky it would be your husband.'
Father of two dies after stubbing his toe on coral at Florida theme park.
He had so much stuff he had to construct tunnels to get around his house. Then he lost his way.
Man died in network of tunnels he made through house of rubbish.
Investigators believe Gordon Stewart, 74, died as a result of dehydration, after becoming unable to find his way out of the mass of carrier bags, boxes, old furniture and other junk.
Dominic Mallary, a 24-year-old lead singer of an emerging rock band that just landed a record contract had a signature move,
howling into his microphone as he coiled the wire tighter and tighter around his neck.
But this time, the edgy flourish proved deadly. The pressure caused a clot in his jugular vein, later cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain, according to his mother, band members, and friends. Mallary, an Emerson College graduate who counseled the homeless, died Friday afternoon at Boston Medical Center.
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Mallary appeared fine during and immediately after the show, but about an hour later complained of dizziness and a lack of sensation in his legs. But even as he was taken by ambulance to Boston Medical Center, he remained conscious and called his girlfriend to let her know what had happened.
"I figured he was going to be all right," said Murphy, a 21-year-old who lives in Douglas. "We didn't think it had anything to do with our performance."
But when Mallary arrived at the hospital shortly after 11, he suffered a seizure and lost consciousness, Murphy said. He later fell into an irreversible coma and was pronounced dead Friday.
Death of singer, 24, tied to stage stunt.
Condolences to his family and friends.
Woman swept to sea during proposal on Oregon coast
A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea.
Scott Napper had taken 22-year-old Leafil Alforque to Proposal Rock near Neskowin Beach to pop the question at a place that got its name from couples ready to marry. Napper and Alforque had been dating since they met on the Internet in 2005. But Alforque had arrived in Oregon on a visa from the Philippines just three days before the fateful trip to the coast.
Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket. About 10 feet from the rock, a wave about 3 feet high suddenly came toward them.
"I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it," Napper said.
By the time he turned to find Alforque, only 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, she had been caught by the receding waters.
"She was about 30 feet away, getting swept away," Napper said.
The 45-year-old Silverton man tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight, and when he looked up again she was gone.
"That's the last I saw of her," he said in an interview Wednesday, breaking into tears.
What a horror!
A 34-year-old man from Queens who had recently lost his job took a new temporary one at Walmart to help with the day-after-Thanksgiving sales and was trampled to death
Then, at 5:03 a.m., Jdimytai Damour, 34 - hired just for the holiday rush - opened the door, and a frenzied horde of hundreds surged forward, knocking him to the ground and crushing him, police said.
"They overran him and kept running into the store. They pushed right over his body," said Nassau County Police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming. "Many of them did not even know he was down there."
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Other employees tried to battle forward to help Damour, but were pushed back by the crowd, Fleming said. Even officers responding to the scene had difficulty pushing through the mob to get to the fallen man.
"It was utter and complete chaos," Fleming said.
Even though it was clear there was trouble, shoppers continued pushing forward, stepping over Damour's crushed body, witnesses said.
"Nobody cared. They were still trying to get in. People were stampeding to get inside," Brown said.
His friends were stunned.
Friends were stunned to learn of the death of the Brooklyn native remembered for his gentle, introspective nature.
"He was a good kid, he'd help anyone out," said pal Ronald Jean. "He wanted to be a teacher. He talked about going back to school. He loved reading, and he wrote his own poetry."
Damour's mom, Marie Telismond, spent many years working as a housekeeper at the famed Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue before returning to her native Haiti.
She's now returning to New York to bury her son.
I'm glad the police are reviewing videos to find the shoppers who trampled Jdimtai Damour to death.
Such behavior can not be tolerated in a civilized society.
Jdimtai Damour, rest in peace.
Woman killed by husband's coffin
A Brazilian woman has died after being struck by her husband's coffin when a hearse was involved in a car crash.
The 67-year-old woman was on the way to the cemetery to bury her husband, reports the BBC.
The hearse was struck from behind by an Alfa Romeo car, police said.
The coffin slammed into the head of the woman, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the hearse, killing her instantly, according to officers.
Marciana Silva Barcelos and her family were on the way to a cemetery in the town of Alvorada in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, for the funeral of her partner, Josi Silveira Coimbra.
The 76-year-old man had died of a heart attack on Sunday after attending a dance.
Following the accident, the driver of the Alfa Romeo was trapped for around 50 minutes in the wreckage and was taken to hospital.
The driver of the hearse and a son of the dead man, who was also travelling in the hearse, were treated for minor injuries.
This struck me as particularly sad as I imagine young Dan Hurley just entering puberty and doing his best to cope with the changes in his body.
Twelve year old boy collapses and dies after using too much spray deodorant in a cramped bathroom
Daniel Hurley died after using Lynx Vice spray - but the coroner said the dangers were clearly explained on the can
Consultant pathologist Dr Andrew Hitchcock, who carried out a postmortem examination on Daniel, said he found no evidence of substance abuse. There was also no evidence of any life-threatening disease, alcohol or drugs in Daniel's body.
'What we have in this case is someone who may well have had a cardiac abnormality in the presence of the solvent,' Dr Hitchcock said.
'There is a very reasonable assumption that the passive inhalation of the solvent almost certainly led to his death.'
Condolences to his poor parents. His father said that Daniel
was always putting gel on his hair and spraying deodorant'.
Two French wine-makers suffocated by carbon dioxide fumes from grapes they were treading
Two amateur French wine makers have died after they were suffocated by the fumes from the grapes they were treading with their bare feet.
The victims had volunteered to help a friend make wine at his vineyard in the northern Ardeche region and had climbed into the six-foot wide vat to begin the traditional process of extracting the juice from the grapes.
But police believe Daniel Moulin, 48, and 50-year-old Gerard Dachis were overcome by carbon dioxide fumes that are given off during fermentation and collapsed.
I can't decide what category this fits in, so it goes in both - No Way to Go and Good Death.
Woman dies in pit of boiling water
A RUSSIAN woman has died after falling into a pit of boiling water that opened up on a street.
The hole was caused by a ruptured underground heating pipe.
"She parked her car, left it, and immediately found herself in boiling water," said an official at the Military Medical Academy hospital in St Petersburg.
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Most Russian cities have ageing municipal heating systems that pump boiling water under the streets and into houses.
Ruptures regularly occur in late autumn when the system is switched on for the winter.
Winning contestant dies during competitive eating event
After gorging on greasy food as fast as he could eat, a 23-year-old died after 'relentless vomiting'.
A 77 year-old man, visiting the site where his parents were buried was digging a hole around the foundation of a stone when the concrete block fell on his back.
Man dies in Quebec cemetery after tombstone falls on him.
Aspiring chef dies hours after making ultra-hot sauce for chili-eating contest.
Andrew Lee, 33, had used a bag of home-grown red chillies to make a super-hot sauce.
The forklift truck driver, who had recently passed a medical at work, dared his girlfriend's brother to eat a spoonful - then ate a plateful himself. Shortly after he had a heart attack and died.
Road rage woman burned to death by ramming rival motorist and revving her engine until her car went up in flames.
The victim was so overcome with anger she refused to get out of her burning car and even threatened a would-be rescuer who tried to persuade her.
If you do, at least know what the Death Cap toadstool - amanita phalloides - looks like.
Here's another photo of a more mature death cap.
Dryer Fire kills Lexington mother
A deadly fire that smoldered for hours while Gena Brown and her two daughters slept Friday night probably started in a dryer vent, according to state fire officials. The blaze killed Brown shortly before dawn after she shouted a warning to her girls to flee.
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State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said dryer fires are not uncommon in Massachusetts. In 2006, there were 87 such fires, 72 of which occurred in homes. Altogether the fires caused $500,000 in damage, he said.
While many were caused by mechanical malfunctions, about 20 percent occurred because people failed to clean the dryer lint screen. In addition to cleaning the lint screen, Coan said, state officials recommend cleaning the vent pipe that channels hot air from the dryer outside at least twice a year.
Lint is extremely flammable, Coan said. Brown is the second person to die in recent years as the result of a dryer fire, although the other death occurred under bizarre circumstances.
Coan said in that case, an alleged burglar who had broken into a laundromat got stuck in a vent where he died when a fire erupted
If you're drunk, don't go to the zoo to take photos of the bears
THREE bears at a Ukrainian zoo tore a man "limb from limb" after he fell into their enclosure, local media reports.
The 22-year-old man was drunk and trying to take close-up shots of the Siberian Brown bears at Mykolaev city zoo when he lost his footing, witnesses said, acording to Channel 5 television.
The three bears charged the man immediately, tearing him "limb from limb" as he tried to escape, according to the station, quoted by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency.
The man was dead before keepers could separate the animals from their victim.
A TOURIST in desperate need of a toilet break at a train station was killed when he urinated on an electrified railway track which was carrying 750 volts.
The victim was electrocuted after he crept into a recess to relieve himself. It is thought his urine splashed on the line and he died instantly when the charge leaped up at him.
In Russia, a woman upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.
The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch...The woman then walked out of the room and returned three hours later to check on what she thought was an unusually quiet sleeping husband.
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Video on the television channel's Web site showed emergency workers sawing away the side panels of a couch to remove a man in his underwear lying headfirst between the cushions.
Emergency workers said the man died instantly.
Woman kills husband with folding couch
Ruling finds Japanese man died from overwork
A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm.
The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife
A middle-aged man collapsed and died of water overdose after drinking five times recommended intake.
He collapsed with a fatal heart attack after drinking vast amounts of water to relieve pain from a gum disease.
The divorcee thought he was being sensible by refusing to take painkillers and had no idea he was risking his life by drinking excessively.
He was taken to hospital last December after collapsing at home and doctors initially thought he was drunk on alcohol because he was staggering and slurring his words.
In reality the symptoms were caused by the excess water causing swelling in the brain.
Doctors put salt back into his body in an attempt to counter the effects of his huge water intake, but the following day he suffered a fatal heart attack.
On their honeymoon husband goes scuba diving with his new wife on the Great Barrier reef only his wife never comes up.
Since the husband was an experienced diver, since he asked his fiancee before the wedding to increase her life insurance and make him the sole beneficiary, since he, as her dive buddy, didn't rush to help his inexperienced wife who was struggling to breathe and sinking into the deep but instead decided to swim away for help, Daniel Watson, an American tourist is charged with murder.
Of course, someone had an underwater camera and took pictures.
Man shoots self dead while breaking into house.
Police in a Dallas suburb say a man trying to rob a house accidentally shot himself after kicking down the door and died in the driveway.
Grand Prairie police say the body of 19-year-old Cameron Sands was found outside the house early Tuesday.
Police Lt. John Brimmer says the evidence indicates Sands shot himself while trying to pull the gun from his waistband. He then dropped the gun and ran until he collapsed.
One day in 1971, a woman called Sarah Krasnoff made off with her 14-year-old grandson, who was caught up in an unseemly custody dispute, and took him into the sky. In a plane, she knew, they were subject to no laws, and if they never stopped moving, the law could never catch up with them. They flew from New York to Amsterdam. When they arrived, they turned around and flew from Amsterdam to New York. Then they flew from New York to Amsterdam again, and from Amsterdam to New York, again and again and again, month after month.
They took about 160 flights in all, one after the other, according to the stage piece "Jet Lag." They saw 22 movies an average of seven times each. They ate lunch again and again and turned their watches six hours forward, then six hours back. The whole fugitive enterprise ended when Krasnoff, 74, finally collapsed and died, the victim, doctors could only suppose, of terminal jet lag.
Pico Iyer writes of Jet Lag in the New York Times via Kottke
To kill himself, he swallowed pesticide, but his wife found him, called the emergency medical personnel who took him to an emergency room where 54 were sickened by his toxic vomit.
The man vomited while having his stomach pumped, and odorous toxic gas spread through the emergency room. Thirty-one hospital staff members, including doctors, and 23 outpatients and their families were sickened. About 20 of them were in treatment rooms, and others were in the waiting lounge.
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The woman listed in serious condition was about 10 meters away from the man at the time of the incident. She had gone to the hospital for treatment of kidney failure and pneumonia.
Among 44 people who suffered minor health problems were two 1-year-old babies and two 3-year-old children.
After a spat in a bar between sports rivals in Nashua, New Hampshire, Ivonne Hernandez, a Yankee fan got in her car, heard someone chant 'Yankees suck' and then ran down a group of Red Sox fans killing one.
"She never braked, and she accelerated at a high speed for about 200 feet. She went directly at this group of people," prosecutor Susan Morrell said of Ivonne Hernandez, who is charged with reckless second-degree murder in the death early Friday of Matthew Beaudoin, 29.
Now comes her Shock Confession. Her defense attorney is arguing she was pushed to the breaking point.
She said, 'I didn't touch any of them,' . "She said they were running towards her car. She said, 'The guy ran on top of my car.' "
Condolences to the family of Matthew Beaudoin. They can never again believe It's only a game.
This soaring photo is the last one known of the Roman Catholic priest who wanted to raise money to build a worship center for truckers by breaking the 19-hour world record for flying with balloons.
An experienced skydiver, Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off under a column of a thousand helium-filled balloons. He was equipped with a bouyant chair, a thermal suit, a parachute, a satellite phone and a GPS device.
He disappeared when winds blew him over the ocean. Fishing boats and rescue workers in helicopters found bits of balloons along the coast. A week after his disappearance, the Brazilian navy called off the search
An Italian woman artist who wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people was hitchhiking from Milan to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace.
Her naked body was found in the bushes of Gebze, Turkey.
"World Peace' hitcher is murdered.
Man killed while beating would-be robber
Facing the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on a dark West Baltimore street, Roland Scott fought back. He pulled out his own weapon - a fake handgun - and wrested the shotgun away from his attacker, city police said.
Scott ordered the man to strip naked in the middle of Laurens Street, took $800 from him and forced him to march into the laundry room of a nearby apartment building.
"He starts beating him, telling him to get more money, saying, 'Get me a cell phone or I'm going to kill you,'" said Sgt. Dennis M. Raftery Jr., a supervisor in the Police Department's homicide unit. "He is beating him with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun."
Raftery said the shotgun, then pointed at Scott, discharged, hitting Scott in the stomach and killing him. Authorities said his death will be ruled accidental.
"It is unusual," Raftery said yesterday. "I don't know how to put it. It is sort of like one for the books
Breast-surgery complications kill West Boca High cheerleader
Stephanie Kuleba had a charmed life: captain of the varsity cheerleading squad at West Boca High, a nearly perfect grade-point average, good looks and a ticket to the University of Florida, where she would start her journey toward becoming a medical doctor.
Her friends said she was "perfect," so when Kuleba died Saturday of complications from breast augmentation surgery, none of them could understand how the girl whose success in life "was a sure thing" could perish in such a strange and devastating fashion.
Condolences to her family.
Far from Michigan, Judy Zagorski, 57, was on a spring break vacation with her family, aboard a boat off the Florida Keys.
She was sunbathing on the boat's deck when a Giant stingray leaps onto the boat and impales her through the neck killing her
Condolences to her family.
I know it's tiresome to hear people sing off tune, especially if they are drunk, but one man in Thailand took it way too far.
John Denver karaoke sparks Thai killing spree
"When I began shooting nobody pleaded for his life because they were all drunk," he said after his arrest.
He said he was so furious with their awful singing that he did not notice he had murdered his own brother-in-law.
The inability to accept the inevitability of death can ruin your life as this book reviewer writes about Susan Sontag's son and his book,
"Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir" (David Rieff)
From the NYT review entitled A Fight for Life Consumes Both Mother and Son.
“A bad death” is another matter. We all know those when we see them, the miserably protracted and painful affairs that overwhelm everyone — the deceased and survivors alike — with panic, guilt and bitter regrets.
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Obviously,” Mr. Rieff says, “there is no comparison between the sufferings of a person who is ill and the sufferings of those who love them.” Still, one suspects he got the worst of the deal, for despite what he describes as a tense relationship with his mother, he was cast in the role of head cheerleader. His job was to enthusiastically endorse her struggle, always to be optimistic and supportive and never, ever, to talk about death.
“What she wanted from me was an adamant refusal to accept that it was even possible that she might not survive,” Mr. Rieff writes. Ms. Sontag “might be covered in sores, incontinent and half delirious,” but Mr. Rieff would “tell her at great and cheerful length about how much better she seemed to look/seem/be compared to the day before.”
Months of this duplicity left him guilty and miserable, obsessively revisiting every decision again and again, even — and especially — after she died.
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He and his mother will undoubtedly survive for a long time to come in medical school courses on death and dying — as a case study in how not to do it.
In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool because of an "astounding misapplication of judgment".
Some of the 2007 nominees
The Enema Within Getting drunk when your throat is too sore to do it in the usual way.
Coitus Interruptus - Coming and going at the same time.
Gravity still works - Amazing the number of thieves who try to steal tower supports to sell as scrap metal.
Stop. Look. Listen. Or tomorrow you'll be missing
This is sad because I can imagine so many people in a rush, on their phone, not paying attention.
Amtrak train hits, kills pedestrian who, absorbed in a cell phone call, walked around a lowered crossing gate and on to the tracks.
His house was so full that he built a network of tunnels so he could move around in it. Four tons of rubbish had to be removed before his body could be removed from his bedroom.
Collector killed by his own hoard.
A man who jumped into a lake to flee police was killed by an alligator more than 9 feet long.
