1997 DARWIN AWARD NOMINEES

[Guest guest]

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.