It's an annual honor given to the person who improved the "gene pool" the
most by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. As
always, competition this year has been keen.
And the candidates this year are.............
* In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet
of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to
retrieve his car keys.
* A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he
ran," accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
* Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had
dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach-goers said Daniel
Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been
sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed,
burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks,
used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident
of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using
heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on.
Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.
* Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell
face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death
was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his
hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in Selbyville, Del, as he
won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four
bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
HONORABLE MENTION:
* Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover township, NJ, and his
wife Bonnie was also injured, when a quarter-stick of dynamite blew up in
their car. While driving around at 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite
and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but apparently
failed to notice the window was closed.
RUNNER UP:
* TACOMA, WA Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends
when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the
Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more
heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30
AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one
had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered
and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby.
One end of the cable was secured around Bingham's leg and the other
end was tied to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable
tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his
fall into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All
I can say" said Bingham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night.
There's just no other explanation for it."
Bingham's foot was never located.
AND THE WINNER:
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed
his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a
bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally
let it fly, and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop!
Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing
elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him. "The
sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr.Riesfeldt to
the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the
elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him" said flabbergasted
Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. With no one there to help him, he lay
under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and
during that time he suffocated.
It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves that "****
happens!"
