2005 Darwin Awards

Announced Annually in December, the 2005 Darwin Awards
 

Honorable Mentions

12) According to police in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Daniel Kolta, 27,

and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in

the game of chicken they were playing with their Snowmobiles.

11) In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of

water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch sewer grate to

retrieve his car keys. 

10) A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker died accidentally when

he jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

9) A Buxton, NC man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he

had dug in the sand caved in while he sat inside it.
Beach-goers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection
from the win! d, and had been sitting on a beach chair at the bottom of
the hole when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5-feet of sand. People
on the beach tried to use their hands and shovels to make their way to
Jones but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy
equipment almost an hour to free Jones who had expired.

8) Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, California, 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 when he hit the floor below.

7) According to police in Dahlonega, Georgia, ROTC cadet Nick

Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death by fellow cadet,
Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not
penetrate the flack vest Berrena was wearing.

6) Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in Selbyville, Delaware,

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.

5) In Guthrie, Oklahoma, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with

a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a nearby

rock and hit the head of his pal, Antonio Martinez.

4) In Elyria, Ohio, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs

in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane blowtorch,

which caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house down.

3) Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, along with

his wife Bonnie, when a quarter-stick of dynamite blew up inside their car.  

Apparently, 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. They failed

to notice that the window was closed.

RUNNER UP

2) Tacoma, Washington; Kerry Bingham who had been drinking with

several friends, when one of them said that they knew a person who

had bungee-jumped from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the
middle of traffic. The group of ten, now inebriated, 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
pointed out a coil of lineman's cable that lay nearby. Volunteering to
jump, one end of the cable was secured around Bingham's leg and the
other end was tied to the bridge. His jump lasted 40 feet before the
cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle and he continued to
fall.  "All I can say is that God was watching out for me on that night,
there's just no other explanation for it."   His foot was never located. 

      WINNER OF THE 2005 DARWIN AWARD

Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt of Paderborn, Germany,

fed his constipated elephant, Stepan, 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 dung.  Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich,
46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when
the relief came.  "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.
 

This just goes to show just how stupid people can be. What a little common

sense could have prevented..