| Home | Newest Jokes | Funny Pictures | Funny Videos |
| Darwin Awards [1997] |
| These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) that individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. 1997 Darwin Award Nominees (November 1997, Pennsylvania) Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, was bitten by a cobra belonging to his friend, Roger Croteau, after playfully reaching into the tank and picking up the snake. Wayne subsequently refused to go to a hospital, telling Roger, "I'm a man, I can handle it." Falser words have seldom been spoken. Instead of a hospital, Wayne reported to a bar. He had three drinks, and enjoyed bragging that he had just been bitten by a cobra. Cobra venom is a slow-acting central nervous system toxin. He died within a few hours, in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania. (31 July 1997) Two teens were disassembling an electric tower with wrenches when it toppled to the ground. They apparently wanted to sell its aluminum supports for scrap, but they failed to realize the essential role the aptly named "support" plays in a 160-foot tower. One of the men was crushed by the collapse of the ten-thousand-pound tower, while the other dug himself out from under, a sadder but wiser man from his close brush with a Darwin Award. (4 December 1997, North Carolina) He just wanted some privacy. Daniel Jones suffocated when a sandy 8-foot hole caved in as he relaxed inside it on a beach chair. Observers on the Outer Banks beach in Buxton, NC said he might have dug the hole for privacy and for protection from the wind. Beach-goers used their hands and plastic toy shovels in an unsuccessful attempt to claw their way to Jones. "You wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin said. Rescue workers with heavy equipment took nearly hour to free him from 5 feet of sand, while 200 people looked on. The 21-year-old resident of Woodbridge, VA was pronounced dead on Thursday. (21 December 1997, Texas) A Dallas man who was exposing himself to passing traffic died Friday night. Police were alerted by a motorist who had spotted Richard Hollis, 47, standing naked on a railroad trestle. When officers arrived, Hollis was standing under the trestle, still naked. As officers approached, he grabbed his clothes and ran back onto the railroad trestle. He leapt from the trestle, apparently aiming for a concrete support underneath, but missed and fell 35 feet to the ground. He died at Parkland hospital an hour later. (23 May 1997, Kansas) A Wichita woman who allowed her 10-year-old son to back the family car down the driveway stumbled while directing the boy and was fatally run down when he stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. At about 5:30PM the woman's son and a friend wanted to play basketball in the driveway, but the car was in the way. The mother stood behind the car helping guide the maneuver. She stumbled after walking backwards into a bush. The 28-year-old accident victim died at the scene Friday. Her name was withheld by authorities. The boy was physically unhurt. (18 December 1997, Malaysia) Four teenage boys spent months industriously digging tunnels in a river bank, planning to use them as trenches in an imaginary war game. Three of them were killed at noon today when one of the tunnels caved in on them. One boy, Mohd Suhaimi Saad, 12, was rescued from the tunnel 15 minutes after the incident. Residents of Kampung Bendang Tok Teri took about an hour to pull out the bodies of the remaining three boys, Mohd Suhaimi Md Isa Haron, 18, Mahadir Ahmad, 17, and Nik Kamaruddin Razak, 12. The four buried teens, together with eight other friends from Kampung Bendang Tok Teri, had gone to the river bank to dig the tunnels, which measured 1.2 meters by three meters. The surviving child, Saad, said all four had used coconut shells to dig the tunnel over the past week. They had dug a hole big enough for four people, but as they continued to excavate, the sides of the tunnel suddenly caved in, burying all four. Saad was able to breathe, as he was only buried up to his chest. "I saw my friends being engulfed by the earth, but I coul not help them. I could not move," he said. Saad's father, said he was aware that his son had gone to the river with his friends. He said his son would go to dig his tunnel without fail nearly every day, "But I was taken aback when I heard that my son was trapped in a cave-in."The bodies were sent to the Kuala Nerang Hospital mortuary for post-mortems. June 1997) A suspected burglar fell to his death from the 12th story balcony early yesterday after being surprised by the Calgary apartment's occupants. Residents of the suite are shaken from the incident and baffled as to how the alleged intruder managed to access the balcony on the top floor of the Royal View Apartments, 1320 16 Ave. SW. Dean Grabo, 23, was home with his wife about 12:30 a.m. when he heard a noise on his balcony. "We were surprised, but not nearly surprised as he was," said Grabo, whose yell startled the intruder, who fell while scrambling to flee. The body of a man of about 30 years old was found on the ground floor patio directly below Grabo's balcony. He has not been identified and foul play is not suspected. 'We're a little confused how he got up there and a little shaken up," said Grabo. "It's not every day something like this happens and somebody perishes." Building resident manager Brian Lester was also puzzled by the incident. "I had to let police into the next apartment over and the door was locked, so it doesn't look like he broke in there," said Lester. "It's a weird situation - the police didn't say much." Police went to the 200-suite apartment in the Beltline area after several residents complained of hearing a loud noise. Unlike most cats this Cat Burglar lost all nine Lives and didn't land on his feet. (30 December 1997, Mexico) A security guard intending to impress female friends took a deadly gamble, losing his game of Russian roulette at a La Paz fast-food restaurant. Police say Victor Alba, 21, died instantly Saturday when he put his .38-caliber revolver to his head and pulled the trigger at a suburban hamburger outlet. Alba was trying to "impress some female friends," according to the newspaper Hoy de La Paz. (December 1997, Pennsylvania) A prisoner in the new Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh attempted to evade his punishment by engineering an escape from his confinement. Jerome constructed a hundred-foot rope of bedsheets, broke through a supposedly shatter-proof cell window, began to climb to freedom down his makeshift ladder. It is not known whether his plan took into account the curiosity of drivers on the busy street and Liberty Bridge below. It certainly did not take into account the sharp edges of the glass, the worn nature of the bedsheet, nor the great distance to the pavement. The bottom of the knotted bedsheet was 86 feet short of the ground. But our hero did not reach the end of the rope. The window pane sliced through the weak cloth and dropped him to his untidy demise 150 feet below. But wait there's more! (3 November 1998) Apparently the prison rumor of the previous death did not reach a prisoner who was awating transfer to federal penitentary one year later. He tied eight bedsheets together and rappelled from his seventh-floor window, only to find the rope fell 25 feet short of the ground. Luckier than Jerome, he merely fractured his ankle and scraped his face. (December 1997, Brazil) A bicyclist crossing an airport runway in Sorocaba, Sao Paulo, was killed when he was hit by a landing airplane. Marcelo Dias dos Santos, 25, could not hear the plane coming because he was listening to his Walkman on headphones, investigators said. (23 August 1997, Holland) A group of employees were happy to escape work and be bussed around on a day tour by their company. It was a sunny day, and some of the more boisterous employees enjoyed sticking their heads out a rooftop window. I can picture them like puppies enjoying the wind in their ears. The driver of the speeding bus told them several times to pay attention to the road and stop their foolishness. And then it happened. Two men had their heads out of the window, singing as the wind blew across their faces, when the bus entered a viaduct. The cracking of bone was heard throughout the bus. Their heads did not come off cleanly, as you might expect, but the men fell dead into the bus with cracked heads and broken necks. The chauffeur, asked whether safety regulations were properly observed, replied, "I always lock the damn thing when kids are in the bus, because kids just don't listen. But for God's sake, these were adults.'' 1997 Darwin Awards Runner-Up (13 July 1997, Virginia) Eric A. Barcia, a 22-year-old Reston, VA resident, was found dead yesterday after he used bungee cords to jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. The fast food worker taped a number of bungee cords together and strapped one end around his foot. Barcia had the foresight to anchor the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, and he even remembered to measure the length of the bungee cords to make sure that they were a few feet short of the 70 foot drop. He proceeded to fall headfirst from the trestle, and hit the pavement 70 feet below several seconds later. Fairfax County police said "The stretched length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground." Perhaps the deceased fast food worker should have stuck to the line, "Do you want fries with that?" 1997 Darwin Awards Winner Alan Hall, 48, was found collapsed on the front lawn of his brother's Fairfield home on December 5, 8 hours after his p*nis had been cut off at the base. Paramedics rushed Hall to North Bay Medical Center, where surgeons were unsuccessful in their attempts to reattach his severed organ. Hall blamed the maiming on a woman named Brenda, whom he met at a local gas station the previous night. He brought Brenda to his trailer, parked in the driveway of his brother's Fairfield home, and had sex. Around 3AM, the woman mentioned revenge and cut off his p*nis with a razor-sharp hobby knife, then fled the trailer on foot. Details of the attack were sketchy, and police were unsure why Hall could not defend himself. Fairfield police Lieutenant William Gresham said Hall may have been using drugs. A heated manhunt for Brenda ensued. She was described as a 42-year-old white female, 5' 7" and 135 pounds, dressed in a white blouse, navy blue jacket and blue slacks, and possibly driving a brown Ford F350 pickup truck. Meanwhile, after being discharged from the hospital on Monday, Hall drove off in a pickup hitched to his trailer and disappeared. Detectives were eager to interview him again, but were unable to locate him due to his transient lifestyle. More intriguing details began to emerge. Hall was arrested during the 1970's for drug possession and drunk driving. In 1982 he was arrested for taking his young daughter out of state. Psychological tests suggested that he suffered permanent mental trauma while serving with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, causing blackouts and alcoholism. His ex-wife described him as a packrat who enjoyed taking trips in his mobile trailer home. In 1983 Hall was convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a 23-year-old Suisun City woman found strangled in a car parked at a local Denny's restaurant on 17 February. Hall confessed to the murder, saying that she taunted him about his inability to achieve an erection when he tried to have sex with her. His statement was ruled inadmissible because of improper police interrogation techniques, and prosecutors agreed to let Hall plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He served half of a six-year prison term. Police speculated that the woman who cut off his p*nis may have been carrying out a 14-year-old vendetta for the slaying of her friend. But the truth was even stranger. When Hall was finally located and interviewed on Thursday, he admitted that he cut off his own p*nis. A voice stress analyzer indicated that he was telling the truth. "At this point, there is no evidence that a crime occurred," police Lieutenant William Gresham said in a press release. "The case is being reclassified as an injured person report." Hall may face misdemeanor charges for filing a false police report. Ironically, Alan Hall works as a pipe-fitter, according to court records. |
| Submitted By: Anonymous... |
Home - Privacy Policy
Site Copyright �2003-2007 Nick Hemingway