1. 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.
Kalamazoo Gazette
2. James Burns, 34, of Alamo Michigan, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police
described as a -farm-type truck-. Burts 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 and the other man found Burns -wrapped in the drive shaft-.
Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario
3. Man Slips, Falls 23 Stories to His Death : A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his condominium
apartment in this Toronto suberb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death, police said Monday.
Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair Sunday when the accident occurred, said inspector D'Arcy
Honer of the Peel regional police. -It appears the chair moved and he went over the balcony-, honer said.
-It's one of those freak accidents. No foul play is suspected-.
Hickory Daily Record
4. 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 bit grabbed insteead a Smith & Wesson
.38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
UPI, Toronto
5. 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 Lauwers, 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.
Ap, Cairo, Egypt
6. Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt.
An 18-year-old farmerwas the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an
undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said. His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim
well, went in one by one to help him, but also drown. Two elderly farmers then came to help, but they apparently were
pulled by the same undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat
Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.
Bloomburg News Service
7. 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 clout 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. He was -...a big man with a huge capacity for creating [this deadly
gas]-. Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.
San Jose Mercury News
8. A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana, Fla., in March when his car smashed into a
pole in the median strip of Interstate95 in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was travelling at 80 MPH
and ,judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading.
The News of the Wierd
9. Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Wierd 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. In March 1989,
sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
The News of the Wierd
10. On January 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death row, but later serving a life sentence
at the state prison in Pittsburgh, PA., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting
on his metal toilet.
The Indianapolis Star
11. 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 weapondischarged in his face, sheriff's investigators said. Gregory
David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30pm. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber
muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
AP, Mammoth Lakes
12. A San Anselmo man died yesterday when he hit a lift towerat the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam
pad, authorities said. Matthew David Hubal, 22, was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred
about 3am, the Mono County Sheriff's Department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley
and undid some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department.
The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers. The group had apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and
Hubal crashed into a tower. It was not clear if the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed. -With the cold temperature,
the snow was probably pretty fast-, said Donnelly.
Reuters, Warsaw, Poland
13. A poacher electrocuting fish in a lake in central Poland fell into the water and suffered the same fate as his quarry,
police said Thursday. The 24-year-old man was one of four who went fishing with a cable, one end of which they attached
to a net and the other to a high voltage electrical supply line, the PAP news agency quoted a police official in Wloclawek
as saying. -For a while everything went according to the poachers' plan and they had fish in their bags. But at a
certain moment the man holding the net tripped and fell into the water-, the agency said. The other poachers tried
in vain to revive him, it said.
AP, St. Louis
14. 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 into his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconcious in front
of the store. Paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.
Unknown
15. To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it
fell on him.
Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA
16. Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering
an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tongue, state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap
as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D. Payne. -Another man had it in an aquarium, hooked to a battery and was
trying to explode it-, Payne said. -It wouldn't go off and this guy said, 'I'll show you how to set it off.' I just can't imagine
anyone doing something like that-, Payne said.
Bruce Groninger, Seattle, WA
17. In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and discharging firearms from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, age 27. The men were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the beer apparently impaired their aim and, despite of the estimated 35 shots the group fired, the animal escaped into a 3 foot diameter drainage pipe some 100 feet away from Mr. Michaels' deck. Determined to terminate the animal, Mr. Michaels' retrieved a can of gasoline and poured some down the pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire 5 gallon fuel can down the pipe and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one to admit defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide feet-first approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match. The subsequent rapidly expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed. He exited the angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to witness Joseph McFadden, 31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his own home, right over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front lawn. In all, he traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported, "Followed by a loud thud." Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries. "It was actually pretty cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out of a cannon at the circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get hurt."
There still is no word about the raccoon.
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