Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, PA, 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.

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 December 4, 1997.

Doctors warn of a dangerous new method of cocaine abuse: injecting the drug directly into the urinary tract. Physicians from New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center reported the case of a 34-year-old man who suffered severe bleeding under the skin after pumping cocaine into his urethra. It led to complications that destroyed his penis, nine fingers, and parts of his legs. "They fill an eye dropper or a syringe with a cocaine solution and inject it into the penis," said Dr. Samuel Perry, a professor of clinical psychiatry.

The man had injected cocaine before intercourse in an effort to enhance sexual performance. He was admitted to the hospital because his penis had remained erect for three days, resulting in a painful inability to urinate. The medical term for a prolonged erection is "priapism." On his third day in the hospital, the man's erection suddenly subsided. Over the next 12 hours, blood leaked into the tissues of his feet, hands, genitals, back and chest. Blood coagulation caused tissues to die over large areas of the patient's body, and he was transferred to the burn unit of New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.

Doctors there were forced to amputate the man's legs above the knee and all but one of his fingers to stop the spread of gangrene. The patient's penis fell off by itself. The man is currently recovering in a rehabilitation facility.

Men who inject cocaine into the penis report that it gives them a sexual high. Drug abuse treatment experts have previously reported external use of cocaine as a sexual stimulant. Cocaine powder is rubbed onto the surface of the genital organs by both men and women in an effort to halt premature ejacuation or improve sexual sensations.

"We report this case to alert clinicians to this new method of cocaine abuse and to describe its rare and previously unreported complications," the doctors concluded.

"Intraurethral Cocaine Administration" JC Mahler, S Perry, B Sutton, JAMA 1988 Jun 3;259(21):3126

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.

The Dallas Morning News, December 21, 1997

Eric A. Barcia, a 22-year-old Reston Virginia 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?"

Two people were disassembling an electric tower with wrenches when it toppled Tuesday afternoon. The teens apparently wanted to sell its aluminum supports for scrap. One of the teens was crushed by the tower and the other dug himself out from under the 160' 10,000 pound tower.

A Wichita, Kansas 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.

A boy fell 200ft to his death moments after his sister told him to stop fooling around near a cliff edge, an inquest was told yesterday. Jamie Underdown, 10, fell from Seaford Head, East Sussex, while out walking a dog with his sister Jemma, 12, and two friends.

It was the first time he had been allowed to go to the cliff without an adult and he had been warned to be careful by his mother, the inquest at Eastbourne was told. Despite the warning, Jamie was playing close to the edge, pretending to fall and shouting for help. Jemma said in a statement: "I kept telling him if he played too close to the edge he would fall over and die. He kept calling me 'Bossy Boots'. He didn't listen." Jasmine Rowson, eight, who was also on the cliff walk, said: "Jamie slipped and he was trying to get back up. He was hanging on to the edge. I touched his hand and went to get Vicky and Jemma but they did not believe me. I went back and he slipped and fell."

Jamie's mother Sandra is now campaigning for the local council to fence off the cliffs where he died. She told the inquest: "I was told I was an over- protective parent so I started to let him do things. The last words I said to him were: All right, do not be long. Be careful." The coroner, David Wadman, said, "One has to take a practical viewpoint. It would be a substantial operation to fence the entire cliff in East Sussex. "This was a lively young lad enjoying himself and showing off perhaps. He was fooling around and at one stage he was even tragically aping the disaster that was to occur a few moments later."

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.

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.

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.

back

Write to me