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Sigh. Another day, another Urban Legend. Check this URL:
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa072097.htm
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com www.hicomp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: David Burney [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 01 October, 1999 8:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OT:Friday Darwin Award Candidate
I'm not certain of the validity of the source listed at the
bottom of this document. Yet I am certain of it's irony.
This could have been a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
Subject: Murder or Suicide
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science,
AAFS president, Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the
legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of
Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head.
The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten story building
Intending to commit suicide.
He left a note to that effect indicating his despondency. As
He fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun
Blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly.
Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety
Net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect
Some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able
to complete his suicide the way he had planned.
Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to
commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism
might not be what he intended," is still defined as committing suicide. That
Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below at
street level, but that his suicide attempt probably would not have been
successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel
that he had a homicide on his hands.
The room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast
emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing
vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset
that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and
the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus.
When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in
the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted
with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant.
They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it
was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded
shotgun.
He had no intention to murder her.
Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident,
That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing
investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the
shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.
It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's
financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to
use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that
his father would shoot his mother.
The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for
the death of Ronald Opus. Now comes the bizarre twist. Further
investigation revealed that the son was in fact Ronald Opus. He had become
increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to
engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story
building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing
through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so
the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
............Very tidy of him.
(A true story from Associated Press, by Kurt Westervel)
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David Burney [log in to unmask]
Summit Racing Equipment http://www.summitracing.com
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el ocio es el padre de todos los vicios
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All opinions expressed herein are my own and reflect,
in no way, those of my employer.
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