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Bumfights & Societal Decline

Its good to see he is finally sorting his life out

Man In 'Bumfights' Video Turns Life Around

Daughter Contacts Father After Learning Of 'Bumfights' Video

POSTED: 11:03 am PDT July 19, 2004
UPDATED: 11:19 am PDT July 19, 2004

SAN DIEGO -- A homeless man who was featured in the "Bumfights" underground shock video says he has begun to turn his life around after publicity from the video prompted his estranged daughter to find him.


Rufus Hannah, (pictured, left) who was dubbed "Rufus the Stunt Bum" in the video, said his daughter wrote to him and said "I can't believe you are living like this." She also informed Hannah that he was now a grandfather. The letter motivated him to stop drinking.

"I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't believe what I was doing," Hannah said, adding that he hasn't had a drink in 20 months.

Last week, Hannah, 49, served as a volunteer leader during "Stand Down," an annual event in San Diego to help homeless veterans find services such as counseling and medical treatment.

"Bumfights" was filmed mostly in San Diego and was sold over the Internet for a copy.

Hannah was filmed barreling down a flight of stairs in a shopping cart, ramming his head into a wall, and punching another homeless man in the face.

Hannah said the young men who made the video gave him alcohol and money to perform. They had the letters spelling "Bumfight" tattooed onto his fingers.

Homeless advocates decried the videotapes as exploitive and demeaning. The young men who made the tape were charged with battery and soliciting a felony. They pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of staging an illegal fight and were ordered to perform 280 hours of community service.

"They're pretty sick kids," Hannah said.

A civil case brought by Hannah and another man, Donald Brennan, is unresolved.

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/3547065/detail.html
 
But I'm sorry to hear that copycat videos keep getting made:

Human torch case teens 'just kids', court told

July 21, 2004 - 2:18PM


Three teenagers accused of the torching murder of a Victorian homeless man "were not monsters but just kids", a court was told today.

Three boys - two aged 16 and one 15 - faced a children's court committal hearing today, charged with the murder of Arthur Burrows.

The 66-year-old was found burnt to death in his humpy at a Mildura park, in north-west Victoria, early on November 2 last year.

A fourth teenager, aged 18, was committed earlier this year to stand trial in the Victorian Supreme Court on the same charge.

Defence lawyers today told the court all three boys had consistently claimed that Mr Burrows' death was an accident and all lacked the maturity to realise lighting the fire would cause the death.

They called on the magistrate to commit the boys to trial on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

But the Crown argued: "Why else was it (the fire) lit and why else would they leave and leave the fire going?"

He said all three had a history of aggression and intimidation towards the victim.
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The court had previously heard that all three had watched a United States video downloaded from the internet called Bumfights, which showed attacks on the homeless.

One witness said the video showed homeless people, being tied up, fighting each other, being paid to run into signs and crates, doused in water that the video hosts pretended was petrol and being sprayed with paint.

The court also was told the boys had shot a video of the fire which was later destroyed.

The court heard a staffer at a juvenile detention centre overheard one of the teenagers admit his role in Mr Burrows' death.

The detention centre officer took notes after allegedly hearing the youth say: "I burnt the c--t with me mate. He's dead but it was an accident. There were four of us".

The committal hearing has been adjourned until tomorrow.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/21/1090089202959.html?oneclick=true
 
Defence lawyers today told the court all three boys had consistently claimed that Mr Burrows' death was an accident and all lacked the maturity to realise lighting the fire would cause the death.

A 15 year old who didn't realise that lighting a fire could result in death?

Don't make me laugh.
 
Judge jails producers of 'Bumfights' video



By Ray Huard
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 10, 2005

EL CAJON – Two producers of a "Bumfights" video of homeless people fighting and performing dangerous stunts were jailed by a Superior Court judge yesterday for failing to perform required community service work.

Zachary Bubeck and Ryan McPherson were handcuffed in the courtroom and taken into custody after Judge Charles W. Ervin sentenced them to 180 days in jail and ordered them held on $100,000 bail pending appeal.

"They have demonstrated no remorse because apparently they believe they haven't done anything wrong," Ervin said.

Lawyers for Bubeck, 27, and McPherson, 21, filed an immediate appeal and said the bail set by Ervin was excessive.

"McPherson's lawyer, Jan Ronis, said the judge's decision to jail the two men was "an unfortunate injustice." He said the Las Vegas men reacted by telling their lawyers "call a bondsman" to get out of jail pending their appeal.

Bubeck and McPherson were ordered in June 2003 to perform 280 hours of community service work after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to stage an illegal fight.

A judge dismissed felony charges of battery and soliciting a felony in connection with the production of the video, which has become a commercial success but also stirred public outrage over the exploitation of the homeless.

Many fights and stunts in the video involve two La Mesa homeless men, Rufus Hannah and Donald Brennan. Both have filed civil suits that are still pending against the video producers.

Two other men involved in producing the video, Daniel Tanner and Michael Slyman, also pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge, but their court-ordered community service isn't at issue in this case.

Prosecutor Curtis Ross told Judge Ervin that Bubeck and McPherson "have figuratively flipped off the court" by failing to perform the work and by laughing in the courtroom during an earlier hearing.

Several officials of the Alpha Project's Neil Good Day Center for the homeless testified yesterday that they had no recollection of Bubeck and McPherson performing the required work despite a December 2003 letter from a former center coordinator to the contrary.

"It's impossible," said center security director Sammie Watkins, who oversaw the assignments of people performing community service work.

Watkins said he remembered seeing Bubeck at the center "a couple of times" but remembered seeing McPherson only once.

Former center office coordinator Robin Miller in December 2003 wrote a letter to the court saying McPherson and Bubeck had done the required work.

Testifying yesterday, Miller said she relied on conversations with Watkins and a second security worker in writing the letter. Watkins testified that he never told Miller that the two men had done the full 280 hours of work.

Watkins and other center workers testified that record keeping was lax.

"More often than not," people doing community service work at the center ignored a requirement that they sign in and out, said Bradley Simmons, who took over as the center's program manager in December 2004.

Tia Howard, the center's mail coordinator, said she took special notice of Bubeck and McPherson when they first went to the center because it was unusual to see someone with so many hours of court-ordered community service work.

Howard said the two men wouldn't tell curious center workers what they did to warrant such a penalty.

"They kind of laughed it off," Howard said.

Howard said she makes it a point to get to know everyone who comes to the center and had seen Bubeck and McPherson come in only twice.

Bubeck's lawyer, Michael Pancer, and Ronis argued that the center's record keeping was so poor that the center had no way of keeping track of how much work was done by Bubeck and McPherson.

Judge Ervin said the center's record keeping "is not on trial here" and "not troubling to the court given all businesses have problems with their accountability." He said witness testimony was sufficient to show that Bubeck and McPherson had not done the required work.

Source
 
lutzman said:
Defence lawyers today told the court all three boys had consistently claimed that Mr Burrows' death was an accident and all lacked the maturity to realise lighting the fire would cause the death.

A 15 year old who didn't realise that lighting a fire could result in death?

Don't make me laugh.

Boy convicted of crossbow killing

A 16-year-old boy has been found guilty of killing a man with a crossbow.
The judge lifted reporting restrictions allowing Daley Bibby, of High Street, Welling, south London to be named after he was convicted of manslaughter.


Bibby, who denied the killing, fired the crossbow at Wayne Philips, 30, outside his Dartford flat in Kent in March, Maidstone Crown Court heard.

Bibby was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter. Two men with him in court were acquitted.

'Crossbows are weapons*, they are accurate and deadly'
Det Insp Dave Withers
(* No shit, Sherlock...)

Mr Philips died in hospital after Bibby fired the three-and-half- inch crossbow bolt through his heart.

The court heard Bibby, who was 15 at the time of the killing, had phoned the flat in Patterson Court where Mr Philips was staying to speak to his ex-girlfriend.

A row escalated and there were two confrontations before Bibby turned up outside the flat with the weapon at 0200 GMT.

Mr Philip's girlfriend watched from the balcony as he went out to confront him and it was then Bibby shot him, the court heard.

Bibby's brother Daniel Bibby, 19, and Terrance Enever, 18, both also from Welling, were alleged to have gone with him to the flat.

Both denied murder and affray and were cleared of all counts on Tuesday.

Daley Bibby, who was also convicted of one count of affray and cleared of one count of affray, will be sentenced on 24 January, 2005 after being remanded in custody.

Speaking outside court, Det Insp Dave Withers, said: "It concerns me that despite legislation restricting access of crossbows, this young person could get hold of this kind of weapon so easily with tragic consequences."

"Crossbows are weapons, they are accurate and deadly."

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 115949.stm

Published: 2004/12/21 17:27:06 GMT

© BBC MMV

If deliberately killing someone by firing a crossbow at them only gets you a manslaughter sentence, I might try settling a few scores myself... :roll:
 
A Bumfights retrospective here by the now notorious Count Dankula. I was vaguely aware of these recordings at the time, but I had no idea how extreme they became. The fact that they received such light sentences seems absurd. As to what was going on in Thailand, the mind boggles!

 
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