A window cleaner died after stabbing himself in the groin repeatedly with a jumbo souvenir pencil, an inquest heard.

Jeffrey Burton’s family and friends were baffled by his bizarre death, which was recorded as an open verdict because there was no evidence he was trying to commit suicide.

The room [police found Mr. Burton in] was splattered with blood and music was still playing on his stereo. The giant blood-covered pencil was beside him.

East Sussex coroner Alan Craze told the Hastings inquest: “It’s a mystery to me. If you were choosing to take your own life, that’s not the way you would do it.

“It seems to me that it can’t have been a single stab wound. He seems to have worked on it. The pencil was blunt.”

Poor guy. Novelty items aren’t meant to bring pain to anyone, they’re just supposed to bring the simple joy of seeing something typically small turned into something extremely large. I’m just glad he didn’t harm anyone else. We could have been looking at an OJ Simpsonian double murder if he’d recently won a visit from Publisher’s Clearing House with an oversized check.

[Mirror]
Window cleaner killed himself with giant souvenir pencil, inquest hears

The Michigan State Police Post in St. Ignace has confirmed that a 24-year-old woman committed suicide by jumping off the Mackinac Bridge Saturday, Dec. 12.

Det. Robin Sexton told the News-Review Monday, during a phone interview, that Brandi Hoffman of Shepherd, drove her vehicle to the north side of the bridge around 3 a.m., exited the vehicle and jumped nearly 100 feet to her death.

“Apparently, she was depressed,” Sexton said. “That’s the number one reason for suicide.”

[Petroskey News via Fark]

If you were a woman looking for a mate and you ended up going through this VCR dating programs, you really must have been hard up for love. You’d be more likely to find romantic and spiritual fulfillment by, instead, taking your VCR, unplugging it, setting yourself a nice bubble bath, reflecting on life, then dropping the VCR in the tub with you. At least then you wouldn’t have to hear some guy with a cheap mustache and Zubaz pants telling you that you’re the foxiest lady in the room.

A woman with multiple sclerosis has made legal history by winning her battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified.

Debbie Purdy wanted to know if her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her end her life in Switzerland.

Five Law Lords ruled the Director of Public Prosecutions must specify when a person might face prosecution.

Ms Purdy, 46, from Bradford, said she was “ecstatic” at the ruling and she had been given her life back.

[full story here]

Michael Dexter took a cocktail of around 100 pills with rum and cola in December 2002.

Now he has received an out-of-court payout following a six-year legal fight after he was given at least four times the correct dose of neutralising drugs in A&E.

He was rushed to Blackburn Royal Infirmary after his wife Stephanie and young sons Martin and Trevor returned to the family home in Oswaldtwistle, Lancs, to find he had overdosed.

His legal team said that the excessive dose of drugs administered in A&E caused severe tissue damage to his right arm, which he described as ‘third-degree burns’.

Mr Dexter, who made a second suicide attempt three years later, said: ‘I know they saved my life but if you went in with a heart attack you wouldn’t expect to leave with a limb you can’t use.

‘I had to go to a burns specialist for plastic surgery. They removed tendons from the wrist and I have had three skin grafts.

‘There are not many people who come out of hospital worse than when they went in.’

‘I cannot even cuddle my wife with my right hand now,’ he said.

You know why else you wouldn’t be able to cuddle her? BEING DEAD. UGH.

[source]

A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor’s widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

No foul play was suspected in 69-year-old Sonny Graham’s death at his Vidalia, Ga., home, investigators said. He was found Tuesday in a utility building in his backyard with a single shotgun wound to the throat, said Greg Harvey, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Graham, who was director of the Heritage golf tournament at Sea Pines from 1979 to 1983, was on the verge of congestive heart failure in 1995 when he got a call that a heart was available in Charleston.

That heart was from Terry Cottle, 33, who had shot himself, Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad said.

He married the donor’s widow? This sounds like a bad Tales from the Crypt episode. Only with less crying on my part. That skeletonian bastard freaked me the f out. I’d punch him in his stupid face. What would he do about it? He was just some douchebag that liked to tell stories. He’s no different than some asshole reading in the park. And I can take any asshole reading in the park. Especially if they have no flesh and are made of rotten bone.

Oh yeah anyway that’s creepy. They say that the heart wants what it wants. So I suppose it’s possible that a heart just wants you to shoot yourself. Crazy hearts, what won’t you do?