Thread: Outrageously Dumb Darwin Award Winners 2019

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Booby traps: Man in Maine killed by own device

• 1 December 2019

Image copyrightEPAA 65-year-old American man who rigged his home with a booby trap to keep out intruders has been killed by the device.
Ronald Cyr called police in the town of Van Buren in the state of Maine to say he had been shot.
Police found a door had been designed to fire a handgun should anyone attempt to enter. Mr Cyr was taken to hospital but died of his injuries.
It is illegal for home-owners to install such traps.
Police in Van Buren, which borders the Canadian province of New Brunswick, said they responded to a 911 call in the early evening of Thanksgiving, last Thursday, from a man who said he had been shot.
"Following an extensive investigation that lasted into the early morning... it was determined that Mr Cyr had been shot as the result of the unintentional discharge of one of his homemade devices," the police department said in a Facebook post.
"Regretfully, Mr Cyr succumbed to the injuries he sustained from the gunshot."
It is not known how he managed to set off the device.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionRigging homes with devices that can harm is illegalThe police also found other possible devices and called in help from the Maine State Police Bomb Squad.
There have been other cases of booby-trapped homes in the US.
In February, a team of real estate investors walking through a home they had bought in Philadelphia discovered that a staircase had been rigged with string which, if tripped, would have triggered a swinging knife.
In September last year, a man in Illinois was killed when he opened a neighbour's shed that had been rigged to fire a shotgun. William Wasmund, 48, was found guilty this September of first-degree murder and aggravated battery.
And in October last year a man in Oregon was charged after fortifying his home "like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark".
FBI agents found a circular hot tub linked up to a tripwire, a fortified front door, animal traps and a wheelchair rigged with a shotgun that went off, hitting an agent in the leg.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50619952

30 December 2019, a late entry for the year

20-year-old dies while performing stunt in Mumbai train

A 20-year-old Dilshat Khan died while performing a stunt on a moving train as he was hit by a pole between Diva and Mumbra. The entire incident was captured in a 16-second video by the victim’s friend Hussain Khan, who took Dilshat to the hospital in Mumbra, where he was declared dead on arrival.


Senior railway officials said that the victim, a Kalyan resident, was on his way to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus to buy clothes for a wedding he was to attend.

LiveLeaks Video


This was optimistic

victim’s friend Hussain Khan, who took Dilshat to the hospital

^ talk about stupid. He had a close call just before it happened, but carried on. As a local, he should have known infrastructure is not the best in India.

A NEWLYWED bride fell to her death with three other family members as they posed for a selfie on a dam in India.
The family held hands and stood above the Pambar dam before one of the youngest slipped - dragging everyone over the edge.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/100957...ie-selfie-dam/