Darwin Awards

Mostly taken from here.

RENTON, WA
On February 3, 1990, a Renton, Washington man tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by the that he had no previous record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choices as listed below:
1. The target was H&J Leather & Firearms, a gun shop;
2. The shop was full of customers, in a state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places;
3. To enter the shop, he had to step around a marked Police patrol car parked at the front door;
4. An officer in uniform was standing next to the counter,
Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, removing him from the gene pool. Several other customers also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one else was hurt.

NOMINEE #5 - 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 had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers, 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 #2 - Kalamazoo Gazette:
James Burns, 34, 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."

(12 February 2003) Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse. But when it comes to hand to hand combat with sharp blades, butchers working in a slaughterhouse are more than a match for your average thief. They stabbed two of the intruders to death. The third man escaped from the angry butchers and fled in his car.
Police soon spotted him, and after a brief car chase, the would-be thief pulled over and leapt from his vehicle. But instead of fleeing into the underbrush, he tried to dodge heavy traffic and escape across the highway. Perhaps he thought that threatening butchers with knives was not a sufficient demonstration of his intelligence.
Within seconds, the natural justice system meted out his punishment in the form of a large truck, which struck and killed him


NOMINEE #17 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1-1-93:
In December near Mineral Wells, Tex., three men who were attempting to steal copper wire off live electrical lines for resale were electrocuted. Copper wiring is a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is usually stolen from electric cables that are not being used.

(January 2003, India) Regarding accidental deaths during the construction of a subway in New Delhi, the New York Times wrote, "One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and killed him."

(14 February 2002, Pennsylvania) Daniel and his friend were practicing their marksmanship by shooting at targets in a farm field. But instead of the usual choices of mice, bottles, or birds, they selected a more worthy adversary: electrical insulators. These pear-shaped glass or plastic devices are intended to hold electrical wires aloft. But after the men shot six insulators off two utility poles, the shattered targets were no longer up to the job. A high-voltage wire fell to the ground and Daniel, attempting to prevent a serious fire, seized the sizzling wire in his hand, and was electrocuted. An Allegheny Power spokesman advised people not to shoot at electrical insulators.

NOMINEE #11 - The Indianapolis Star:
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.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA
A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bulletproof vest to see if it would protect him against a knife attack. It didn't, and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound. It is good to see the Russians getting into the spirit of the Darwin Awards.

NOMINEE #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.

(28 February 2000, Texas) A Houston man earned a succinct lesson in gun safety when he played Russian roulette with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Rashaad, nineteen, was visiting friends when he announced his intention to play the deadly game. He apparently did not realize that a semiautomatic pistol, unlike a revolver, automatically inserts a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. His chance of winning a round of Russian roulette was zero, as he quickly discovered.