Stupid people award goes to.....

Author: Gordon R Lanker at Whirlpool-USADCPBF
Date: 3/16/98 11:02 AM

NOMINEE 1: San Jose Mercury News - An unidentified man, using a
shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield,
accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged,
blowing a hole in his gut.

NOMINEE 2: Kalamazoo Gazette - James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich.,
was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police
described as a 'farm-type truck.' Burns got a friend to drive the
truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could
ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught
on something, however, and the other man found Burns 'wrapped in
the drive shaft.'

NOMINEE 3: Hickory Daily Record - Ken Charles Barger, 47,
accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C.,
when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed,
he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38
Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

NOMINEE 4: UPI, Toronto - Police said a lawyer demonstrating the
safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through
a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A
police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of
the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was
explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law
students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window
strength according to police reports. Peter Lawyers, managing
partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun
newspaper that Hoy was 'one of the best and brightest' members of
the 200-man association.

NOMINEE 5: Bloomberg News Service - A terrible diet and room with
no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was
killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy
showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had
consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other
things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears
that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud
that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his
windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was
shut up in his near airtight bedroom. According to the article,
'He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating this deadly
gas.' Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.

NOMINEE 6: The News of the weird - Michael Anderson Godwin made
News of the Weird posthumously in 1989. He had spent several
years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder
conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison.
attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was
electrocuted.

NOMINEE 7: The Indianapolis Star - Cigarette lighter may have
triggered fatal explosion Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man
using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader
was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face,
sheriff's investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in
his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators
said Pryor was cleaning a 54-caliber muzzle loader that had not
been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the
barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

NOMINEE 8: St. Louis - Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being
disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to
call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and
walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in
front of the store: paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from
his throat, where it had choked him to death.