‘A man who died near downtown when he jumped from the cab of his moving 18-wheeler was apparently trying to stage a wreck early Tuesday morning to collect from his insurance company, Houston police said. [..]
The victim, whose name has not been released, had head injuries. No other injuries were reported.
Police said the man’s business partner told investigators the trucker was staging an accident to file a fraudulent claim with his insurance company. [..]
The truck was traveling at about 50 mph, police said. The driver was alone in the cab and was not pulling a trailer.’
‘A death row inmate in Texas tore out his eyeball with his fingers and ate it, leaving him blind after he gouged out his other eye several years ago, the state’s department of criminal justice said on Friday.
“We don’t know how it happened,” said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the department. “There are no indications that he used anything other than his hands.”
Andre Thomas, 25, was now in a secure psychiatric facility after he pulled out his left eye last month at the death row unit in Livingston in eastern Texas, Clark said.
Thomas was condemned for killing his wife, son and infant stepdaughter in 2004, according to the department’s brief account of the case. Local media reports said he had ripped out the hearts of his victims.’
‘A cyclist was knocked out after being hit by a corpse thrown from a speeding car.
Student Wu Dan, 16, was riding home when the incident happened.
His uncle Yun Tsui said: “A car passed and a package came flying out the door. It had a dead woman inside. My nephew was very upset.”
Police believe she was the victim of a car accident and was being dumped by the driver who had hit her in Dongyang, eastern China..’
‘Shocking video footage of a newspaper seller being knocked over by police minutes before he died of a heart attack during the G20 protests emerged last night.
Ian Tomlinson, 47, was hit with a baton and pushed to the floor by an officer in riot gear after getting caught up in the demonstrations in the City of London last Wednesday.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission is already investigating the death of Mr Tomlinson – who was not involved in the protest and was trying to walk home from work when the incident occurred. [..]
After the apparent assault, Mr Tomlinson is shown sitting on the floor remonstrating with police who stand back as bystanders help him to his feet.
He then walked away but three minutes later he collapsed and suffered a heart attack. ‘
‘An Australian woman accused of setting her husband’s genitals on fire because she thought he was having an affair has been charged with murder.
Prosecutors said 44-year-old Rajini Narayan confessed to neighbors that she set her husband on fire on Dec. 8, 2008, after she saw him hug another woman.
She was initially charged with endangering life and arson but the charges were upgraded to murder after her 47-year-old husband, Satish Narayan, died from his injuries last week. [..]
Boord quoted Narayan allegedly saying: “I just wanted to burn his penis so it belongs to me and no one else. … I didn’t mean this to happen.”‘
‘As his father raised his camera, an 8-year-old boy aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin set up at a shooting event. Before his father could focus, the third-grader from Connecticut squeezed the trigger, and the high-powered weapon recoiled and fatally shot the boy in the head.
The death of Christopher Bizilj at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club Sunday has raised questions about how someone so young could be allowed to shoot an automatic weapon, which can fire hundreds of rounds in a minute. [..]
State Representative Michael Costello, the Newburyport Democrat who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said yesterday that he plans to draft a bill that would ban anyone younger than age 21 from firing an automatic weapon.
“This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction; it’s a common sense reaction,” he said. “We should take swift action to provide some reasonable restrictions on this type of unreasonable practice. It’s almost indescribable that within a year of leaving a booster seat, an 8-year-old can be holding a submachine gun.”‘
‘Designed to study the beauty of decay.
4”x5” camera made from Aluminium, Titanium, Brass, Silver, Gem Stones and a 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl. Light and time enters at the third eye, exposing the film in the middle of the skull.’
‘The bedridden woman, who weighs nearly half a ton – 1,000 pounds or over 71 stone – is accused of killing her two-year-old nephew.
A grand jury indicted Mayra Lizbeth Rosales, 27, on a charge of first degree murder on Thursday and ordered her bail be set at $150,000.
Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra Rosales told local television news he hoped to take the woman into custody as early as Friday but did not go into detail as to how this would be done.
Lupe Trevino, Hidalgo County Sheriff, said holding Rosales at the county jail for the duration of her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.
“She would die,” said Mr Trevino.’
‘A man was arrested Monday night after he allegedly threatened to kill his brother during an argument over a ladder.
Benjamin Brunson, 71, told police he was upset with his 60-year-old brother, Jesse, because Jesse used a ladder. Benjamin Brunson admitted he told his brother, “I will kill you,” to “get him scared of me, make him cool off,” a police report states.
When police arrived at the brothers’ home in the 800 block of North 10th Street shortly after 6:30 p.m., Jesse Brunson confirmed that the disagreement was about a ladder, according to the report. Jesse Brunson told police he feared that his older brother was capable of carrying out the threat.
While police were there, the two men kept arguing and officers felt that a fight was imminent, the report states.’
‘A twisted oddball with an insatiable animal fetish was arrested after allegedly having sex with 400 cows.
The 53-year-old cleaner told police he did not fancy women and only cows and horses got him randy.
Getulino Ferreira Paraizo said he chose the more tranquil animals before engaging in sex acts with them.
But police say it is even more bizarre.
They accuse him of torturing the animals, sometimes ripping out their eyes before having sex with them and then killing them.
Among the clues he left behind at every scene were empty packages of the same cookies.
Police found another packet on him when they arrested him.’
‘A scriptwriter in Hollywood has become the first person to order a commercial firm to clone a pet. Bernann McKinney paid a Korean company US $50,000 for five copies of Booger – her beloved pit bull terrier who died recently.
The lab used ear tissue from the diseased dog to re-create Booger. The five puppies were born from two surrogate mothers in late June, according to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. [..]
McKinney became deeply attached to Booger after it allegedly saved her life by chasing off a ferocious mastiff. [..]
Ra Jeong-Chang is the CEO of RNL Bio – the company that did the cloning for McKinney. He said his next project will be cloning camels for Middle East sheikhs.’
‘An evil mother driven by rage and jealousy killed her five-year-old son to spite his father, a horrified coroner heard yesterday.
Emma Hart, 27, force-fed Lewis Dangerfield a lethal cocktail of painkillers and antidepressants at their home, then fled to her mother’s flat nearby and ended her own life by slashing her wrists.
In a note to Lewis’s father, Shaun Dangerfield, which she left by the boy’s body, she wrote: ‘I told you I would make you pay, enjoy your life now, nothing is stopping you, ha ha ha. Just remember it’s all your fault.’
Coroner Robin Balmain described the case as the most distressing he had ever dealt with in 25 years of inquests. ‘I can’t imagine something quite so evil as a mother who is prepared to do that.
‘Her actions were simply spite – she was prepared to kill her son to spite Mr Dangerfield. I find it difficult to believe how anybody could do that.”
‘Head bowed and feet shackled, a crazed knifeman suspected of decapitating a sleeping bus passenger and holding the head aloft for other passengers to see, is led into court.
Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, Alberta, was charged with second-degree murder and shuffled into the courtroom in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.
Li, whose face was bruised and one hand bandaged, did not reply when the judge asked him whether he was going to get a lawyer, and only nodded slightly when asked whether he was exercising his right not to speak. [..]
Witnesses said the attacker stabbed the victim up to 50 times and after severing his head he began methodically carving up the body as passengers scrambled to get off the Greyhound bus – which was traveling from Edmonton to Winnipeg in Canada. [..]
“When he was attacking him, he was calm … like he was at the beach.’
‘On the last day of his life, Dallas Carter sat down in his apartment and addressed a letter “TO Whom it my concert.”
He was not a good speller and he could not read well, but the 44-year-old father stitched together, on green construction paper, the last will and testament of a poor man. It ran three pages, 380 words, and it began with the formality of a legal document.
I, Dallas D. Carter, …
This was before the police arrived, before gunshots lit the night and the children fled apartment B28.
… buy the time you get this letter I will be gone or dead. it’s not a good letter. sometime people do dump thing I’m not really a bad person Just life gets away from me sometime …
Before that Saturday night, no one would have expected Dallas Carter to do what he did.’
‘Children screamed in fear when they found a naked body of a man on their way to school in Alice Springs yesterday.
Witnesses said it appeared the caucasian man had been half-eaten by dogs.
Residents of the Hidden Valley town camp in Alice Springs east made the gruesome discovery about 8am yesterday.
A man was driving a group of about five children to school when they came across the body. It lay just off the road close to the town camp’s entrance. [..]
The children’s grandfather described the scene as “horrific”.
The grandfather said: “A lot of meat was torn out of one leg and an arm. I think a dog made a meal of him. [..]’
‘Thomas Hickman drove through New Mexico, police say, until his Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo ran out of gas. Then the 55-year-old North Richland Hills man walked into a field, tied helium balloons to a gun, covered his mouth with duct tape, and shot himself in the back of the head, according to New Mexico State Police.
That determination is a far leap from what authorities first suspected when Mr. Hickman’s body was discovered March 15 near Santa Rosa, N.M., about 100 miles east of Albuquerque. Authorities initially thought the Red Lobster executive had been kidnapped and slain.
But investigators came to the conclusion that Mr. Hickman committed suicide. The first clue was the bundle of white helium balloons, with the gun still attached, found snagged on bushes and cactus near Mr. Hickman’s body.’
‘Controlling blood pressure from middle-age onwards may dramatically reduce the chances of developing dementia, researchers have said.
Two studies support a link between high blood pressure and dementia risk – with one by an Imperial College London team suggesting treatment could cut this.
This study, by published in the Lancet Neurology journal, found blood pressure drugs reduce dementia by 13%.
The Alzheimer’s Society said better control could save 15,000 lives a year. [..]
The precise reasons why high blood pressure might increase the risk of dementia are not fully understood although many scientists believe that it can starve the brain of bloodflow and the oxygen it carries.’
‘The Dyatlov Pass Accident refers to an incident that resulted in the death of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural mountains. The incident happened on the night of February 2, 1959 on the east shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl (Холат Сяхл) (a Mansi name, meaning Mountain of the Dead). The mountain pass (N61°45’17”, E59°27’46”) where the accident occurred has been named Dyatlov Pass (Перевал Дятлова) after the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov (Игорь Дятлов).
The mysterious circumstances of the hikers’ deaths have inspired much speculation. Investigations of the deaths suggest that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot in heavy snow; while the corpses show no signs of struggle, one victim had a fractured skull, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue. The victims’ clothing contained high levels of radiation. Soviet investigators determined only that “a compelling unknown force” had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years thereafter. The causes of the accident remain unclear.’
‘A Washington woman said she filed a federal lawsuit accusing a Miami hospital of “anti-gay animus” after workers refused to let her see her dying partner.
Janice Langbehn and her partner Lisa Marie Pond, both aged 39, intended to enjoy a vacation cruise with three of their four children, marking the women’s 18 years as a couple in February 2007, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Thursday.
The trip abruptly ended when Pond had a massive stroke as the ship was preparing to leave port, the newspaper said.
She was taken to Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Langbehn said workers would not let her see her ailing partner.
A social worker allegedly said the couple was in an “anti-gay city and state.”‘
‘They say you should never meet your heroes. I’ve found this a good rule to live by, but as with any rule, there’s always an exception.
My first exposure to George Carlin was in 1982, when HBO aired his “Carlin at Carnegie” stand-up special. When I saw the advert—featuring a clip of Carlin talking about the clichéd criminal warning of “Don’t try anything funny,” and then adding, “When they’re not looking, I like to go …,” followed by a brief explosion of goofy expressions and pantomime—I immediately asked my parents if I could tape it on our new BetaMax video recorder.
That was a hilarious bit. But when I finally watched the special, Carlin blew my doors off. Whether he was spinning a yarn about Tippy, his farting dog, or analyzing the contents of his fridge, Carlin expressed himself not only humorously, but amazingly eloquently as well. I was, as they say, in stitches.’
‘Grief is universal, and most of us will probably experience the pain grief brings at some point in our lives, usually with the death of a loved one. In time, we move on, accepting the loss.
But for a substantial minority, it’s impossible to let go, and even years later, any reminder of their loss — a picture, a memory — brings on a fresh wave of grief and yearning. The question is, why? Why do some grieve and ultimately adapt, while others can’t get over the loss of someone held dear?
Reporting in the journal NeuroImage, scientists at UCLA suggest that such long-term or “complicated” grief activates neurons in the reward centers of the brain, possibly giving these memories addiction-like properties [..]’
‘Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people’s attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.
Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff’s deputy Royjindar Singh.
“It’s been a long night of wondering, ‘Why?’ — not only for the officers and the passers-by who stopped and tried to help out, but for anyone. Why would somebody do this?” Singh said.
Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.’
‘A dying man who literally gambled on his own life plans to spend his bookie’s winnings on booze, fags and death-defying theme park rides!
“Well, why not?” said pragmatic Jon Matthews who has been living on borrowed time ever since he was diagnosed with an untreatable asbestos-linked cancer more than two years ago. [..]
He walked into Fenny Stratford’s William Hill Bookmakers last September and told surprised staff he wanted to take out a £100 bet against the doctors’ prediction that he’d dead by Christmas.
“I thought it would be a bit of fun and I thought it would give me an incentive to battle this horrible illness and survive a bit longer. The people at William Hill checked all the facts and gave me odds of 50-1.”‘
‘A footage of the first polar bear seen in Iceland in 20 years being shot dead by police has been posted online.
The bear, an adult male weighing around 250kg, was presumed to have swum some 300km from Greenland or from a distant chunk of Arctic ice to Skagafjordur in northern Iceland.
It was planned to sedate the animal and move it back to Greenland but the police decided it was safest to kill the bear immediately.
“There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog”, said police spokesman Petur Bjornsson.’
‘A roadside toilet stop ended in pain, embarrassment and almost death for a tourist when a highly venomous snake bit the end of his penis.
The deadly brown snake slithered between his legs and lunged at his manhood as he crouched on a roadside near Laura, 300km northwest of Cairns, about a month ago.
Details of the incident only came to light yesterday after they were confirmed by a paramedic.
“It certainly had a swipe at him,” an ambulance spokesman said yesterday.
“But it didn’t envenomate him.
“As it came through it must have got a bit of a shock.”‘
Australia should make this into an advertising slogan to attract tourists. ‘Come to Australia. Our wildlife will bite you on the cock.’ Can’t fail. 🙂
‘A surge in US airstrikes within densely populated areas of Iraq has led to a dramatic rise in civilian casualties.
According to the Washington Post, ever since an attempted crackdown on Shi’ite militias by the Iraqi government in March, which led to increased attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad that killed some Americans, the US military has been firing missiles almost every day into the crowded Shi’ite slum of Sadr City.
Residents describe the attacks as indiscriminate and say they have led to many civilian deaths. However, the US Army states that they choose their targets carefully and often refrain from firing for fear of civilian casualties. [..]
CNN reports further on Iraqi victims of US gunfire, noting that “anger against the Americans is only increasing.”‘
‘At 2:25 P.M., I happened to be down on the street, smoking a cigarette with a co-worker. Out of the blue, I hear “Splat,” followed by piercing, vivid screams of fear and nauseous anxiety.
Suddenly, I saw two girls running down the side of the street with blood and muscle tissue covering their faces. And I just walked around, asking myself what the hell was going on.
In the confusion, my buddy told me to turn around. I did, and there it was: [..]’
‘”His heart filled virtually his whole chest,” recalls Dr. Diane Meier describing her very first patient, an 89-year-old suffering from end-stage congestive heart failure.
It was the first day of Meier’s internship at a hospital in Portland Oregon, and after being assigned 23 patients, she was suddenly told that one of her patients, who had been in the Intensive Care Unit for months, was “coding.” She raced to the ICU where the resident told her to put in a “central line.”
“I didn’t know how,” Meier admits. “I felt overwhelmed and inadequate. Then, the patient died …
“Everyone just walked out of the room,” she remembers. I stood there. I still sometimes flash back on that scene: the patient, naked, lying on the table, strips of paper everywhere, the room empty. This was my patient. I felt I was supposed to do something — but I didn’t know what.”‘
‘The remains of a woman have been found sitting in front of her TV – 42 years after she was reported missing.
Hedviga Golik, who was born in 1924, had apparently made herself a cup of tea before sitting in her favourite armchair in front of her black and white television.
Croatian police said she was last seen by neighbours in 1966, when she would have been 42 years old.
Her neighbours thought she had moved out of her flat in the capital, Zagreb.
But she was found by police and bailiffs who had broken in to help the authorities establish who owned the flat.
A police spokesman said: “So far, we have no idea how it is possible that someone officially reported missing so long ago was not found before in the same apartment she used to live in.’
