Odd Ways to Go! Strange, bizzare news on death

A lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a skyscraper crashed through a pane and plunged to his death.

Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association.

Origins: On 9 July 1993, Garry Hoy, Falling man a 38-year-old lawyer with the Toronto law firm of Holden Day Wilson, did indeed plunge to his death from the 24th floor Toronto Dominion Bank Tower in front of several horrified witnesses.

The firm's spokesperson said Hoy "... was testing the strength of the window. There was a lot of joking about how the window wouldn't open maybe on a hot day ... Apparently, it was the second attempt [at testing the window] that one of them popped out and he went through."

As well, a Toronto police officer reported that Hoy "... was showing his knowledge of the tensile strength of window glass and presumably the glass gave way. I know the frame and the blinds are still there."

Our advice is to apply the same rule to architecture as you do to computers: Don't ever bet your life on windows not crashing.

A golfer angered by a bad shot is killed by the club he threw in frustration.

In 1994, 16-year-old Jeremy Brenno of Gloversville, New York, was killed when he struck a bench with a golf club, and the shaft broke, bounced back at him, and pierced his heart. Brenno had missed a shot on the sixth hole at the Kingsboro Golf Club and looked to vent his frustration by giving the nearby bench a good whack in retaliation. The fatal club was a No. 3 wood.

Brenno's is not the only accidental death by golf club. In 2005, 15-year-old Rafael Naranjo of Gardner, Massachusetts, expired after playfully swinging a 5-iron he'd found in the street at a fire hydrant . His act caused part of the shaft, along with the head of the club, to break off and lodge in his neck.

In 1951, Edward Harrison was playing a round at Inglewood in Kenmore, Washington, when the shaft of his driver broke and pierced his groin. He staggered 100 yards before collapsing and bleeding to death.

In 2005, 12-year-old Chandler Hugh Jackson of Frisco, Texas, died in Cunningham, Kentucky, after apparently falling onto a broken golf club at Dogwood Hill club. A piece of the club's shaft went through the boy's chest and pierced his aorta.

A pedestrian was killed by a flying fire hydrant.

Loss of life through head-on collision or rollover have become mundane events in our automotively-enhanced world; we expect to read in every morning's paper about traffic deaths on local roads and highways.

While all traffic fatalities are tragedies to be grieved over, some happen in far more unusual fashion than others. Every now and then a vehicle-caused demise is so wildly at odds with what we expect of our world that it shakes the cobwebs from our heads as it serves to remind us that life can be lost in the blink of an eye and through no fault of anyone's.

On 21 June 2007, 24-year-old Humberto Hernandez was killed by a 200-pound fire hydrant that came flying through the air to strike him in the head as he walked with his wife along an Oakland, California, sidewalk.

The fire hydrant had been launched onto its deadly trajectory by a sport utility vehicle that crashed into it. The 2007 Ford Escape had blown a tire and swerved onto the sidewalk, striking the hydrant. Water pressure and the impact of the crash sent the fire plug flying like a "bullet," said Phil Abrams, an Alameda County deputy sheriff.

This was far from the first death caused by an object inadvertently launched by a vehicle, but it is somewhat unusual in that the victim wasn't in a car himself. Over
the years, numerous drivers and passengers have met the Grim Reaper via tires flying off passing vehicles, but other items have also ended lives.

On 28 December 2006, a ball-style trailer hitch killed 32-year-old Sean O'Shea of Encinitas, California, when it bounced up from the roadway and through his windshield, striking him in the head before coming to rest in his vehicle's back cargo area. The 5- or 6-pound hitch either fell off a truck or came off the back of a vehicle.

Another death occurred in similar fashion on 30 March 1995, in Santa Clara, California. On that day, while riding as the passenger in a friend's car, 37-year-old Joanne Bergeson was struck by a car jack that flew into the vehicle; she died in the hospital a few hours later of head wounds so sustained. The jack had either been dropped by a truck traveling in front of Bergeson's vehicle or had been lying in the roadway and was kicked up by it.

Strange News: Man survives 18--inch long drill bit through his head!

A construction worker survived an accident that poked an 18-inch-long drill bit through one eye and out the side of his skull.

Although we dread the gory industrial accidents that leave their victims dead or result in the loss of a limb (or more), other types of on-the-job injuries can strike us as far more horrific. One such accident took place on 15 August 2003, when Ron Hunt, a Truckee, California, construction worker, landed face-first on a large drill bit.

Hunt was working in the Tahoe Donner Subdivision in Truckee, standing atop a six-foot ladder while drilling over his head, when he gave the drill an extra push to bore a hole. As he felt the ladder begin to wobble out from under Although we dread the gory industrial accidents that leave their victims dead or result in the loss of a limb (or more), other types of on-the-job injuries can strike us as far more horrific. One such accident took place on 15 August 2003, when Ron Hunt, a Truckee, California, construction worker, landed face-first on a large drill bit. him, he tried tossing his power drill aside (a standard practice in the construction industry, intended to prevent workers from injuring themselves attempting to regain grips on out-of-control power tools) before falling to the ground. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to throw the drill far enough away, and he landed upon it face-first. The 18-inch-long, 1.5-inch diameter chip auger drill bit pierced Hunt's right eye and exited through the side of his skull. As Hunt described the mishap:

By the time I was falling, and I let the drill go down, I was already on top of it. The drill was facing up but it was off. When the drill hit, it just exploded my eye. It skewered me. I ran my hands up the drill bit, up to my eye, and put my other hand in the back of my head and felt it coming through the back of my head, and that's where pretty much the shock set in. The first thing I thought was 'Am I going to die?' I knew it was serious. I was scared. I didn't know if it was in my brain or not.

The only other worker on the site that morning, Forrest Keating, heard Hunt call for help and rushed to assist him:

The first thing I saw was this drill sticking out about 6 inches from the back of his head and 6 inches out the front. It was a trip, like something out of a horror movie. I was amazed he was still alive.
Keating removed his shirt and attempted to stem the flow of blood gushing from Hunt's eye by wrapping the shirt around the drill. He then ran 300 yards to a nearby house to summon medical help, and when paramedics arrived they released the body of the drill from the bit and loaded Hunt onto a gurney. Hunt (conscious throughout his ordeal) was then flown by helicopter to Washoe Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, where doctors pondered their options for treating the bizarre injury. Miraculously, although the drill bit tunneled between Hunt's scalp and his skull as it came out of the side of his head, it pushed his brain aside rather than pushing into it, sparing him from death, brain damage, or paralysis.

Dr. Paul Ludlow, an ear, nose and throat specialist who was the facial trauma physician on call that morning, initially intended to cut off the drill bit but eventually decided that the best approach was to, in effect, unscrew it from Hunt's head:
We had to either cut down on it, which meant making a rather long incision through a lot of muscle, or just unscrew it - twist it all the way through and out. We would have cut it off, but after a few minutes of drilling, we noticed that it was loose. And so we just put down our blade and twisted the bit.

Hunt had sufficiently recovered from his injuries by early September to appear on national television programs such as CNN News and ABC's "Good Morning America." Although he was truly fortunate not to have suffered more severe injuries (or damage to his motor or speech skills), he came away from the accident far from unscathed: besides suffering a fractured skull (which required a second operation to insert two titanium plates to reinforce the fractured bone), he lost an eye and now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and rehabilitation costs. According to news accounts, Hunt is not covered by state compensation for on-the-job injuries, and he was a self-employed worker with no medical insurance.

Injuries of this type always call to mind the case of Phineas Gage, who in 1848 survived an accident which blew a 3-foot, 7-inch tamping iron under a cheek bone and completely out through the top of his head. Although Gage lived on for almost another dozen years, he suffered dramatic changes in personality and was subject to epileptic seizures in his final months.