Once again it is time to start thinking about casting your vote for the
1998 Darwin Award winner! As you may already know, the Darwin Awards are for
those nominees who contribute to the gene pool by
dying in spectacularly stupid ways (before they breed thankfully).
The 1998 nominees are:
NOMINEE No. 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 No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette] James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) 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 No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record] Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally
shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C. wakening 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 No. 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 has 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 No. 5: [Bloomburg 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 an 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 No. 6: [The News of the Weird.] Michael Anderson Godwin made News of
the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's
electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to
life in prison. Whilst sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting
to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
NOMINEE NO. 7: ["The Indianapolis Star"]. A 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 muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the
lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
NOMINEE No. 8: [AP, 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.
NOMINEE No. 9:
To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock-and was killed instantly when it fell on
him.
NOMINEE No. 10: [Associated Press, Kincaid, W. VA] 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."
NOMINEE No. 11: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario] A man cleaning a
birdfeeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto
suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death. Stefan Macko, 55, was
standing on a wheeled chair 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.
