The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design (23 page)

Early one morning, police received a call. Three robbers had invaded a brothel! Officers surrounded the building and used a bullhorn to coax the offenders from the premises.

The robbers were understandably frightened to be surrounded by dozens of policemen. But instead of surrendering, they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, and fled the building while shooting at everything in sight. The policemen ducked, covered, and shot back. Two running robbers were fatally injured, and the third was wounded.

Why was the gunfight over so quickly? The three robbers were carrying REAL guns loaded with FAKE ammunition. They were firing blanks, making enough flash and thunder to fool the police into shooting back, but not enough to actually help them escape.

Reference: www.terra.es, Terra Networks, South America

“For being named Lantern, he sure wasn’t very bright.”

Lantern, thirty, enjoyed playing a private game with his wife. He would pull down his pants, place the barrel of a shotgun against his scrotum, and tell her to pull the trigger. They had played this game frequently, to his immense pleasure. The gun was unloaded, of course.

On this pleasant Friday, he was excited to try again. The thrill was even larger because his wife’s girlfriend was pulling into the driveway at the time. “Shoot ’em off before she gets here!” Lantern told his wife. She pulled the trigger. But this time, the gun was loaded.

Emergency crews arrived to find Lantern bleeding profusely from his groin, wearing shoes and socks, with his pants down around his ankles. The police were told it was an accident, and the couple didn’t know the gun was loaded. Lantern was admitted to the hospital in critical condition, where he survived, possibly earning the right to the rarest of honors: the Living Darwin Award. We await confirmation of his procreative status.

Reference:
Green Bay Press-Gazette

Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse (for what, we wonder). 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 knife-wielding 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.

Reference: Eyewitness account

“A do-it-yourself briss
(
circumcision).”

A man was found lying facedown, covered in mud and blood, the apparent victim of a street crime. It was not until a post-mortem examination was conducted that U.N. police were able to reconstruct his last moments, based on an unusual discovery in his pants.

 

Safety Tip: If you’re ever stuck with a knife, DON’T PULL IT OUT! It may be painful, but it’s acting as a plug for your wound. Pull the knife out, and you’re left with a hole ready to leak whatever’s inside out.

 

 

This up-and-coming young man decided it was cool to shove his weapons, two long knives, down the waistband of his trousers. Unsheathed. The hapless fellow jumped over a small fence and landed in a large puddle of mud. He slipped, which sent the blade of his “trouser knife” into his leg and severed his femoral artery. This has the same effect as cutting off the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. In thirty seconds, one loses enough blood to be rendered unconscious, with nearly complete blood loss within two minutes. He bled to death before he could stagger ten feet from the puddle.

“At the time, he was uncooperative,” said the Saline County sheriff, describing the difficulty deputies encountered in finding the cause of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Perhaps Lou, the twenty-seven-year-old victim of his inner klutz, was simply embarrassed to admit he had managed to shoot himself in the groin with a .22-caliber bullet—while armed only with a pellet gun.

The deputy’s report included no mention of alcohol, so Lou was apparently sober when he placed a bullet on a picnic table and fired at it with his air rifle. The results he expected are not known. But the experiment yielded conclusive data. As he eventually, and abashedly, explained to a detective, “a pellet from the rifle hit the shell, causing it to explode.”

The bullet shot into his groin, fragmenting into an area rich with major nerves and arteries, thereby presenting an interesting challenge to Kansas City neurosurgeons. They were up to the task, and Lou was thereby deprived of winning a full Darwin Award…this time!

Reference:
Salina Journal

Just as squirrels bury their acorns to protect them from predators for later use, a man from Howard put his ammunition and three handguns in a safe place before he and his wife departed on vacation. He wanted to be sure they would be there when the couple returned. But just as squirrels frequently forget where they buried a particular acorn, the man forgot that his hiding place was the oven. When they returned from their trip, his wife turned on the oven to prepare dinner. Shortly afterward the couple had to duck behind the refrigerator as the bullets began to explode like popcorn. The husband used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire that the bullets started in the oven. No humans were hurt, but the prognosis for the oven was grim.

Reference:
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Police found Camero lying on the floor behind his bar, bleeding from a gunshot wound. A .22-caliber revolver lay on the floor nearby. The cash register was open, but the cash was undisturbed. It appeared that the bar owner had bravely fended off a robbery attempt—but looks can be deceiving!

Actually, the man had brought his gun along for protection when he unloaded the Saturday-night revenue from the cash register. Camero had trouble getting the register drawer open, so he tucked the gun under his arm and applied a bit more force. The gun slipped, hit the floor, and shot him through the groin, narrowly missing his reproductive organs and his heart before lodging in his right chest cavity.

But at least the cash was safe!

4 A
UGUST
2004, O
KLAHOMA

In a similar incident, law enforcement officers called off their search for an escaped prisoner in order to help a gunshot victim. The victim had been carrying a .22-caliber pistol in the waistband of his cutoff jeans to protect himself from an escaped prisoner he had heard about. To be extra safe, he had pulled back the hammer of the gun before putting it into his pants. The gun went off and shot him in the left buttock. The victim admitted that the incident was “one of my most embarrassing moments.” The escapee remained at large.

Reference:
Spokane Spokesman-Review,
AP

Not far from the Eastern Washington State Hospital for the mentally handicapped, Donnie, an eighteen-year-old A student in gun-safety classes, decided to impress his girlfriend with his coyote hunting skills. He needed a live chicken as bait. So, girlfriend in one hand and .22-caliber rifle in the other, he entered the butchering barn where carefree chickens roamed.

You never know how a mix of testosterone, chickens, and guns will turn out. There are so many variables.

Donnie climbed into the attic, intending to use the stock of the rifle as a club. He swung the rifle at a fluttering fowl, but the rafters got in the way. The gun butt hit the ceiling and discharged, sending a bullet into his right forearm and out the elbow. He didn’t realize he had shot himself until he noticed his right hand twitching, and took his coat off for a closer look.

Donnie shared the lesson he learned: “To know you shot yourself and came close to dying, it’s a pretty scary deal. You’ve gotta be careful with guns.”

Reference:
Spokane Spokesman-Review