What A Way To Go

Idiocy

A Russian who believed he was immortal after surviving a 10,000-volt electric shock in 1992 died after drinking anti-freeze. Dmitry Butakov, 42, invited journalists to Lipetsk to watch him survive the feat, but after his second half litre he collapsed into a coma and later died. London Eve. Standard, 31 Mar; Birmingham Eve. Mail, 1 April 2004.

 

A 37-year-old man weighed down with more than 50lb (23kg) of stolen cameras and CDs, among other items, drowned when he refused to let go of his loot while swimming across the Arkansas River on 16 August. Police from Tulsa, Oklahama, were chasing him when he jumped into the muddy water with a duffel bag containing the goods. "He got about 40 yards out and yelled for help," said police spokesman Lucky Lamons. "The officers took of their shirts, shoes and belts and jumped into the river. By the time they reached him, he had gone under." His body was retrieved about an hour later. Reuters - 18 August 2002

 

William Potogi, 33, was given a ritual bath by a witch doctor in Paramaribo, Surinam, to make him bullet-proof. He asked the witch doctor's assistant to test whether it had worked and was shot dead with his own sawn-off shotgun at point-blank range. According to Ronal Gayadhar, a policeman; "Both men deny murder and claim Potogi died because he lacked faith in the spell". Sun - 10 September 2002

 

Steven Brasher, 42, from Texas, shot and killed his long-time friend Willie Lawson, 39, on 5 November 2001 after accusing him of drinking the last beer in his fridge. "There were only two beers left," he said "so I took one and told Willie not to take my last beer." Newark (NJ) Star Ledger - 6 December 2002.

 

A 26-year-old amateur Indian actor called Kumar burned to death in a Madras theatre in early January in front of an audience of 1,000 while re-enacting the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines who was touched by Hindiu Zealots in January 1999. He had doused himself with petrol to make the murder scene more realistic. Staines , 58, and his two sons - aged seven and ten - were burned to death while asleep in their car. It is thought to be the work of the Hindu hardliner Dara Singh. Brisbane Courier Mail - 19 January 2001.

 

An American whose body was found 19 months after she disappeared near her home in Malaysia was murdered in a bizarre ritual to ascertain winning lottery numbers, according to police. A man who confessed to the murder of Carolyn Jamaica Noraini Abdullah, 35, led them to her body buried on an oil palm estate at Sungai Siput in the northern state of Perek. She had been reported missing in November 1999 after her car was found abandoned. Cockerels, goats - and occasionally humans - are sacrificed to spirits by groups of men who leaders go into trance and supposedly reveal winning combinations to the four-digit national lottery. Daily Telegraph - 25 June; Brisbane Courier Mail - 26 June 2001.

 

Andreas Plack, 23, bled to death in Merano, Italy, after persuading his cousin, Christian Kleon, 29, to cut open his leg with a chainsaw so that he could claim £330,000 on an insurance policy. Keon was charged with murder. Reuters - 1 December 2001.

 

Chalil Chathothu Ravindran, 45, retired to a room in his house in Chelora, a town in southern Indian state of Kerala, on 19 December. He told his mother he would come out of the room after 41 days of prayers with complete abstention from food and water, and that he would have divine powers. When he failed to come out after the specified period, neighbours tried to break into the room but were prevented by his relatives. After 50 days, police forced open the door and found Ravindran's decomposed body. Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin (Queensland) - 12 / 13 February 2000.

 

Saliamin Akrami, 32, an Afghan asylum seeker residing in Willesden, west London, accidentally killed himself on 23 October 1999 by urinating on a live rail at the deserted Kensal Green railway station. Six hundred volts formed an arc into the tip of his penis, causing him to convulse and collapse on the rail. The alcohol in his blood was more than twice the drink-drive limit, and it was likely he was drunk, Pathologist Rufus Crompton identified the cause of death by a tiny, precise burn mark to the urinary opening of the penis. Guardian - 10 March 2000

 

Neil Micklewright, 19, died after accidentally stabbing himself in the eye with a screwdriver while breaking into a church safe in Oldbury, West Midlands. He was found writhing in agony by paramedics. Daily Record - 13 May 2000.

 

Gloria Terrell, 43, was detained by guards at a Value Village store in Detroit who suspected her of shoplifting a pair of shoes. She made a run for it and hid in a garbage compactor, where she was crushed to death after workers returned from a break and started the machine. Associated Press - 31 May 2000.

 

Seven Mexicans died during an exorcism after the room in which they were holding the rite filled with carbon monoxide fumes, local radio and newspapers reported Sunday.

National Formato 21 radio said self-styled ``witch'' Teodoro Martinez was ridding a 15-year-old boy of evil spirits in the town of Tetla, in the central state of Tlaxcala, Friday when the tragedy occurred.

It said authorities found burning coal in the room, which led them to conclude the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. Two people were being treated in the hospital. Reuters - 14 August 2000

 

Thomasina Thomasa, 27, constructed a home-made bazooka out of an old piece of iron piping which he loaded with an empty beer can filled with gravel, using as propellant a teaspon of petrol vapour ignited by a car sparkplug screwed in the pipe base. The can knocked the TV aerial off his own near Buenos Aires in Argentina. The structure fell on him, causing multiple injuries from which he subsequently died. Correpondio Argentina - 18 December 2000.

 

PHNOM PENH, Three Cambodians were killed when they set off an antitank mine during a drunken game at a provincial restaurant, a newspaper reported Sunday.

A local militiaman, a tax collector and another civilian were drinking in a restaurant in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng last weekend when the militiaman placed the 25-year-old mine under the table, Rasmei Kampuchea reported.

``They started playing with it with their feet and stepping on it,'' the paper said.

Other diners and villagers fled and the mine exploded with a thunderous roar minutes later, killing the three men instantly, it said.

After decades of armed conflict, Cambodia remains strewn with landmines and unexploded ordnance. Accidents are common despite warnings by the authorities not to tamper with the devices. Reuters - 18 March 1999

 

A young Mexican couple sneaked into the back of a hearse to have sex, but died from carbon monoxide poisoning becuase they left the motor running to keep the air conditioning on.

The bodies of Jose Agustin Noh, 23, an employee of the Perez funeral home in Campeche, and Ana Maria Camera Suarez were found by a funeral home employee the next day. Campeche is the provincial state capital, about 550 miles (885km) east of Mexico City. Edinburg Eve. News - 11 May 1999

 

A woman died under the wheels of her car as she tried to defrost the windscreen. Jane Thomas, 41, a care assistant from Birmingham, had finished her last shift before Christmas at an old person's home in the city and was scraping her car's windscreen when she leaned through the driver's door to switch on the engine and run the demister. The car, which had been left in reverse with the handbrake off, "leapt into life", knocking Mrs Thomas to the ground. It rolled over her, coming to a rest with the driver's side front wheel on her stomach. Daily Telegraph - 15 May 1999

 

Dennis Verity, of Bridgend, South Wales, who was partially sighted, fried some daffodil bulbs for lunch on his 88th birthday last October, thinking they were onions.

He became violently ill the next day and died in hospital from daffodil poisoning and a malfunction of the heart. Wales Echo - 29 June 1999

 

Kathleen Yeoman, a 46-year-old divorced mother of two, staged an elaborate fake burglary to win back the affection of Paul Cockerhill, her neighbour in Brixworth, Northamptonshire, on 30 October 1998. She ransacked her house, tipping out drawers and throwing jewellery on her bed. She piled electrical goods in the front room, taped her mouth, put a plastic bag over her heard and tied her hands together. Leaving her front door open, she lay across the front doorstep of her former lover. As she waited for his return from a pub, she vomited and, unable to remove the tape from her mouth as her hands were shackled with self-tightening plastic ties, she choked to death. Police at first treated the death as suspicious, but they reviewed the case when they found that nothing had been taken and she still had £918 in her handbag. Times, Daily Telegraph - 1 July 1999.

 

James Dinardi, 44, of Columbia, Missouri, went to Maine on 23 June to pursue a relationship with a woman he had met over the Internet. The woman apparently wanted to end the relationship, so he drove up to her home and cut his neck with a chain saw on her front lawn to prove his love. He died in hospital on 5 July. AP - 7 July 1999

 

Scott Millet, 20, and his sister, Kimberly Millet, an astronomy buff, were watching the Perseid meteor shower - an annual celestial event - through a telescope on the night of 13 August 1999 outside the family's home in the West Bluff neighbourhood of Newport Beach, California. Scott decided to shut off the street light to improve visibility. He used pliers to open an inspection plate at the base of the light, then he cut into the insulation of the 0.75in (2cm) wire - the diameter of a garden hose. He was knocked on his back by 4,000 volts, and died in hospital shortly afterwards. Los Angeles Times - 14 August 1999

 

A 17-year-old gymanst bouncing on the sofa at her birthday party was killed when she lost her balance and bounced out of the window of a sixth floor flat in Berlin. Daily Telegraph - 24 August 1999

 

Three Indonesian cult members were beaten to death by fellow cultists when the 9/9/99 doomsday prediction failed to materialize, the Jakarta Post said Monday.

Like many cults across the country, members were told to prepare for the end of the world at 9 a.m. on September 9. They sold their personal possessions and for nine days before the big day, locked themselves up in their homes.

When nothing happened, the cult members lost control, the newspaper said.

``The members were really mad,'' said Saadi Arsam, village chief of Sukmajaya, east Java.

Police are investigating. Reuters - 13 September 1999

 

A French zoo director was crushed to death on 1 November by a hippopotamus in rut. Jean Ducuing was cycling around the park in Pessac, near Bordeaux, when Komir, a seven-year-old male hippo, charged through an electrified fence after an employee driving a tractor stopped to distribute food. M Ducing, aged in his 60s, had trained Komir. Posters for the zoo feature a picture of Komir with M Ducing's head in his mouth. AFP - 2 November; International Herald tribune - 3 November

 

After an argument, a 25-year-old Argentine man pushed his wife, aged 20, out of a window on the eighth floor of an apartment block in the working class suburb of Bodeo Aires. Her legs became entangled in power cables, breaking her fall, and in an apparent attempt to finish her off, the man tried to jump on top of her. He missed and fell to his death. The woman managed to swing over to a balcony. Reuters - 15 January998

 

Matthew Hubal, 22, was sliding down a ski run in San Anselmo, California, at 3am, when he crashed into a lift tower and died. He was sliding on a makeshift sledge of yellow foam. The lift towers are meant to be cushioned by this foam, and the tower he hit was the one from which he had stolen his sledge. As the report says "There's a moral in there somewhere". The Guardian - 6 February 1998