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Strange Deaths

Frideswide said:
I'm wondering if they weren't handed over from shift to shift properly :(

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.
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Update:

A hospital source confirmed Ms Downey had epilepsy. One of the lines of inquiry the hospital’s investigation will look at is whether she may have had a seizure while breastfeeding her baby and fell out of the bed. A postmortem was carried out on Ms Downey’s remains on Tuesday and a postmortem will be carried out on her baby on Thursday. The results of both will be included in a file that gardaí will prepare for an inquest at Cork City Coroner’s Court.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...tep+down&utm_campaign=morning_briefing_digest
 
JamesWhitehead said:
The Guardian ran a story recently about the suicide of a B & Q
worker. His unrequited love for a colleague drove him to
kill himself by the nylon rope, car, lamp-post method. The rope
- taken from the store's own stock - did its job all to well and his
head was severed.

He seems to have performed this deed in the store's vicinity as
he was found by a co-worker.

I can't trace the story via the Guardian's Search engine and it
doesn't seem to be on Ananova but I'm sure I didn't dream it.
:eek:
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This happened again in the Midlands just a few years ago. Well, not to the same person, obviously.
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Throwing momma from the train

There seems to be a rash of attacks in India resulting in robbery and violent expulsion from the moving train but the polic don't seem bothered:

http://www.keralanext.com/news/index.asp?id=25841
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Last year I met a woman who'd recently moved back to Britain from South Africa where this happens regularly.
Criminals open train doors and throw out victims, who land next to the criminals' waiting accomplices and are robbed.
 
Mal_Adjusted said:
Man died trapped in cupboard

Hi

another ....

source:
--------------------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1346804,00.html

quote:
--------------------

Man died trapped in cupboard

Tuesday November 9, 2004
The Guardian

A man who got stuck in his bedroom cupboard died after struggling to free himself for up to a week, an inquest heard yesterday.

Ronald McClagish, 51, of Murrow, Cambridgeshire, was believed to have been cleaning out his cupboard when a wardrobe toppled over and trapped him inside. The father-of-two was unable to get out because the heavy wardrobe was wedged against the cupboard door.

He broke off a copper water pipe inside the cupboard so he could use it as a tool to batter the inside of the door. But water from the pipe started gushing over him inside the cupboard.

Two police officers went to his home on February 15 and found him dead inside the cupboard with his feet poking out of the bottom.

A post mortem exam revealed he had died of bronchitis which was either caused or worsened by his body being immersed in water. The North and East Cambridgeshire coroner recorded an open verdict.

----------------------

Endquote

Mal F
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This incident was dramatised in a lurid '1,000 Ways To Die'- type programme we saw.
 
FelixAntonius said:
This sounds like a recent account in the Cambridge Evening News of the Wednesday 2nd March 2005, page 18, re-telling the story of the strange death in February 1818 of an undergraduate by the name of Lawrence Dundas:-

"After a drinking sesion at St John's College he had decided to make his way across (Parker's Piece) to the Barnwell area of town for the company of the various young ladies who plied their trade in that area. He was so drunk he got lost crossing the Piece and fell into one of the muddy ditches. (That then surrounded this piece of land).

It was only knee-deep and he managed to struggle out of it, but then he fell back.

He decided it would be easier without his gown, then his jacket and then took everything off except for his pantaloons and stockings-but he'd pulled them down to his ankles so he couldn't move.

He was found the next morning sitting in the ditch in 18 inches of water. The coroner decided that he'd died through exposure to the cold and that it had been caused through being drunk."

This unfortunate death seems to have been the subject of a pamphlet on:- "The Melancholy and Awful Death of Lawrence Dundas, Esq." by FREDERICK HERBERT MABERLY M.A.

http://www.stowmarket-history.co.uk/Maberly.htm
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Dundas isn't a common name. I'm wondering if he was related to the slightly famous Somerset Dundas family.
rynner2 said:
You've just given me a 'heads up' to a coincidence I failed to spot for myself:

Yesterday, I finished reading a murder mystery, "Dangerous Sea", set on the liner Queen Mary in 1937. There is various skullduggery and murder afoot, including the attempted murder of a woman in a sauna! It appeared she had been rendered unconscious with chloroform, and then the heating controls were turned up to maximum... :shock:
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Coincidentally, we're watching a programme about when cruises go wrong. Basically, it's loads of amateur footage of holidaymakers being chucked around on rolling ocean liners or throwing up.
 
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Nope, that's not the same incident as I was thinking of.
The Midlands one involved a couple who were in trouble over some especially nasty child abuse.
 
escargot said:
Nope, that's not the same incident as I was thinking of.
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I meant the Guardian article I could not find in 2003.

I don't know of the Midlands case at all, though I have a dim memory of a case in Stockport, I think. The location was a multi-storey carpark. I can't find any online confirmation of that one. Morbidly browsing the subject suggests that there are American cases and at least one other Welsh one, from Swansea. :(
 
I've asked Escette, who lived near where it happened, and she reminded me that it happened at Bushbury.

It was a couple who were both beheaded although their dog who was present in the car was unharmed.
 
GNC said:
Full story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-g ... t-22512237



I keep seeing this story in the paper and can't make head nor tail of it. No one knows what they were doing in the hotel when their home is just a few miles away, never mind how they both came to be found in a corridor dying of their injuries. It's really weird.
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It seems they killed themselves after being blackmailed, and the blackmailer herself later died in prison.

Cruel conwoman Linsey Cotton who drove mother and daughter to suicide found dead in her cell

The conwoman convinced Margaret and Nicola they were facing 20 years in prison or may even be killed by the Government because they had breached a non-existent confidentiality clause relating to a woman she had invented.

In desperation at the threats, the two women formed a bizarre suicide pact.
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It's a bizarre story.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Exactly this. From what I can see this couple weren't doing anything spectacularly out of the ordinary (for people with their interests), but died as a consequence of a sequence of unfortunate events - and we criticise those who suffer such a process at our peril.

Our lives are full of risk - both intrinsic and adopted (and the perceived 'poshness' or otherwise of the background is irrelevant to the reaper); in retrospect, risk always looks manageable when successfully negotiated - but otherwise, bloody ridiculous.
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Techy and I were chatting along those lines just now; anyone can have an accident. Last week the usually sensible son in law managed to tip boiling water over his foot and had to go to hospital. It's still in a state.

The convo led onto mention of the woman who got trapped in an airing cupboard on holiday and died of hypothermia. That one was truly bizarre and so unlucky - she wandered in there naked in the dark, the door closed, handle fell off, she successfully broke through a wall but hit a picture on the other side, she didn't bang around after 5pm which would have alerted neighbours, the water pipe she broke sprayed her with cold water and gave her hypothermia...

If any one of those mishaps had been avoided she'd probably be alive, poor woman. Could be any of us.
 
escargot said:
Techy and I were chatting along those lines just now; anyone can have an accident. Last week the usually sensible son in law managed to tip boiling water over his foot and had to go to hospital. It's still in a state.

The convo led onto mention of the woman who got trapped in an airing cupboard on holiday and died of hypothermia. That one was truly bizarre and so unlucky - she wandered in there naked in the dark, the door closed, handle fell off, she successfully broke through a wall but hit a picture on the other side, she didn't bang around after 5pm which would have alerted neighbours, the water pipe she broke sprayed her with cold water and gave her hypothermia...

If any one of those mishaps had been avoided she'd probably be alive, poor woman. Could be any of us.
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How strange. You would have thought that, being an airing cupboard, the door would have been sufficiently flimsy to break open. Quite why you want to get into one (especially naked), I'm not sure, but it's a classic example of coming a cropper whilst doing something "safe".
 
PeteS said:
Quite why you want to get into one (especially naked), I'm not sure, but it's a classic example of coming a cropper whilst doing something "safe".
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It was dark - I think she probably opened the wrong door?
 
Frideswide said:
It was dark - I think she probably opened the wrong door?
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I used to run Dr Who celebrity events. One day we had Jaqueline Pearce, Servalan from Blake’s 7. We were having a break and a couple of us were chatting to her outside the room the event was on. She excused herself, turned around and opened a door and walked through it. We stood staring at each other. She had gone through the door fully and closed it behind her. It was a cupboard. There were a few seconds and she eventually opened the door and came back out roaring with laughter. So it doesn’t have to be dark and it’s apparently easily done!
 
I got lost in a bathroom once.

Had gone on holiday with my other half; it was the first night in a rented cottage. I got up in the night needing a wee, but didn't want to disturb him by putting the light on, so tiptoed my way to the bathroom and closed the door. Loo was directly opposite the door, so that was fine. Shut the door, sat on the loo.

Did my wee and then - I couldn't find the bloody door to get out! Nor any light switches! I hadn't really had time to familiarise myself with the layout of the room, so I groped my way around the walls, going round and round in the pitch dark (no windows) and getting thoroughly disorientated in the process. It was actually very scary.

Eventually I found the doorhandle - it was much lower than I'd thought, so I'd not felt it during my grope-round, and got myself out, to find other half sitting up in bed wondering what the hell all the banging and swearing had been. He'd been just about to come and find me.

I left the light on over the mirror after that, and still leave bathroom lights on in dark locations.
 
PeteS said:
How strange. You would have thought that, being an airing cupboard, the door would have been sufficiently flimsy to break open. Quite why you want to get into one (especially naked), I'm not sure, but it's a classic example of coming a cropper whilst doing something "safe".
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Yup, she was alone on holiday and the incident is believed to have happened in the night, most likely when going back to bed from the loo.
 
gordonrutter said:
...She had gone through the door fully and closed it behind her. It was a cupboard. There were a few seconds and she eventually opened the door and came back out roaring with laughter. So it doesn’t have to be dark and it’s apparently easily done!
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I once watched an opera tenor run into a broom cupboard. He was clearly trying to get front of house (along the passage next to the cupboard) and missed his way. What killed it for me was the ten seconds of comedy clattering from within, followed by a full fifteen seconds or so of silence, before he sheepishly opened the door and stole away, head averted and wearing a forced air of nonchalance - as if I and the enormous and outrageously camp ex-merchant seaman who had witnessed the event from a full four feet away would suddenly not notice.

(Tenors are the butt of many jokes in the opera world - having an apocryphal tendency towards stupidity. One of the props for the opera this guy was in was one of those seaside pavement telescopes - the kind you used to put money in, to look at seagulls or something. It was the real deal, but without any guts, so basically a stubby white tube. We walked on stage one day and this tenor was there in his blazer and straw boater - sleeves rolled up and one arm firmly stuck down the length of the telescope - for reasons which were never made clear.

The next day he did it again.

Thick as mince.)
 
Swifty said:
Have we got a performers who die on stage thread?, there's been quite a few now .. a stand up comedian with the stage name Ian Cognito has died on stage in Bicester ..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-47911040
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Sad story. He'd been ill before he went on stage. Early in his act, he joked about dying in front of the audience. Then when he did, they thought it was a continuation of the joke, and they laughed.

Similar thing happened to Tommy Cooper, a great absurdist comedian, who died on stage and everyone laughed, assuming it was part of his act.

Slightly less well known: towards the end of his career, country singer,Hank Williams, was known for being unreliable, cancelling appearances or simply not turning up. Then he died in the car on his way to a performance. When his death was announced, the crowd burst out laughing, thinking it was just another excuse (or, more likely, a joke at Hank's expense by the announcer?)
 
Mikefule said:
Sad story. He'd been ill before he went on stage. Early in his act, he joked about dying in front of the audience. Then when he did, they thought it was a continuation of the joke, and they laughed.

Similar thing happened to Tommy Cooper, a great absurdist comedian, who died on stage and everyone laughed, assuming it was part of his act.

Slightly less well known: towards the end of his career, country singer,Hank Williams, was known for being unreliable, cancelling appearances or simply not turning up. Then he died in the car on his way to a performance. When his death was announced, the crowd burst out laughing, thinking it was just another excuse (or, more likely, a joke at Hank's expense by the announcer?)
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I believe Hank's driver at the time thought he was just Hank being conked out as usual for a few stops until he made a stop where he found poor Hank's body was cold.
 
Former Peruvian Prime Minister Shoots Himself When Police Come To Arrest Him

He was implicated in corruption/bribes involving several other S. American countries.

Garcia is accused of receiving kickbacks from one of Latin America's largest construction firms -- the Brazil-based company Odebrecht -- during the building of an electric train for the Lima metro while he was president during his second term. He has denied the claims.

In his most recent tweet, posted on Tuesday, Garcia said there was "no shred of evidence" against him, accused Peruvian prosecutors of "SPECULATION," and said he had "never sold out and that is proven."
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Carlos Morán, the interior minister, said in an interview with CNN affiliate TV Peru that police arrived at Garcia's home at 6.30 a.m. to execute an arrest warrant.

When police arrived, Garcia asked them to call his attorney and then he entered his bedroom, Morán said. Moments later, a gunshot was heard. Officers forced entry into the bedroom and found Garcia in a sitting position with a wound to the head.
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The corruption scandal -- one of the biggest in modern history -- implicated several former Latin American presidents.

Last year, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned one day before the congress voted on his impeachment. He continued to deny any wrongdoing in the Odebrecht scandal.

Ecuador suspended Vice President Jorge Glas, who was later sentenced to six years in prison in December 2017 for receiving $13.5 million in bribes from Odebrecht.

And former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering, including allegedly allowing Odebrecht to pay for his family's vacation home.
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My neighbour said someone handcuffed himself to a tree and they've just found the body.

I'm sure this must have happened at least once, but is it topical? and is it Glasgow?
 
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