Post Your Darwin Award

[barbaro]

Post your Darwin Award Candidate. Hey?....who got the beer?

Backpack snags on fence; man strangled By John Branton
The Columbian



A panhandler died climbing over a 6-foot-tall chain-link fence while drinking beer and walking with his girlfriend from their begging site to their homeless camp, police said.


James Francis Henry, 51, died Tuesday night from accidental strangulation after he fell and a strap of his heavy backpack became snagged on a top bar of the metal fence, officials said.


His girlfriend, 38-year-old Kelli Jo Barkley, told police she was with him when he became trapped and told her "Help me! Help me!" according to a Vancouver Police Department report.


Barkley said she tried for several minutes to free him but couldn't lift the backpack.
When Henry became limp, she ran and banged on the door of a nearby home....



When a police officer arrived, Barkley waved him down and pointed to the fence. The officer found Henry hanging with his arms limp and not breathing....


Firefighters cut through the locked fence gate to the other side and pulled Henry down. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him in an ambulance before he was pronounced dead about 10:35 p.m.


Barkley said they'd been drinking beer after "flagging" for money at Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard and Interstate 205, the report said.


She said they'd climbed the fence to take a shortcut to a nearby homeless camp.
In the backpack, an officer found about a dozen 40-ounce bottles full of beer, the report said.

Link: Local News | Backpack snags on fence; man strangled | Seattle Times Newspaper

[Gerbil]

Anyone who lives in a high rise condo in Pattaya would be a candidate.

[Gerbil]

In the backpack, an officer found about a dozen 40-ounce bottles full of beer, the report said.

Tragic waste of beer.

[dogblower]

^ Not really, the coppers probably managed to finish it off after their shift ended. Never look a gift horse in the mouth ....

[qwerty]

Here's a great one I just saw in the SF Chronicle:

Woman killed in Hayward after crashing stolen car, police say


Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, April 5, 2008
(04-04) 11:06 PDT Hayward - --
A woman driving a stolen car while fleeing from police in Hayward died early today when she lost control of the vehicle while exiting a highway and flipping it into a hotel parking lot, authorities said.
The woman, whose name wasn't immediately released, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The incident began at 2:42 a.m. when Hayward police Lt. Tom Perry saw the woman speed past him in a white Saturn near B and Alice streets, the California Highway Patrol said.
Perry tried to catch up to the Saturn but lost sight of it near Soto Road and Jackson Street, said CHP Officer Oscar Johnson. Perry then told dispatchers that he was no longer looking for the vehicle, authorities said.
At 3:11 a.m., a security guard making her rounds at the Fairfield Inn on Industrial Boulevard north of Highway 92 reported that the Saturn had crashed onto its roof in the hotel's rear parking lot.
Hayward police and firefighters arrived on the scene and confirmed that the woman had died. Perry confirmed that the vehicle was the same one that had passed him earlier, Johnson said.
Investigators believe the woman had been exiting Highway 92 at Industrial Boulevard at a high rate of speed. The car left the road, crossed an on-ramp to the highway and landed in the hotel parking lot.
Police later determined that the Saturn had been stolen from a BART parking lot the night before.