The 12 Stupidest Ways People Died

Death is always watching, always waiting. But sometimes, he just gets a bit impatient. And you don’t want to make the Grim Reaper wait because then, judging by the twelve cases of the nasties below, he gets the natural world to do the work for him, sometimes in the most horrific ways possible.

12.Franc Filipic

France Filipic, a 47 year old from Slovenia, was described by friends as a “passionate fisherman”. In August 1998, Filipic was last seen alive as he waded into a lake when the sheatfish he had just landed was proving to be hard to reel in. His last words were “Now I have him.” Police divers found his body two days later.

Artists rendering of Franc Filipic

11.Two Anonymous Fishermen

Two fishermen bled to death in 1999 when their penises were bitten off by fish in the river Septik, Papua New Guinea. It is thought that the fish were able to detect the urine streams of their victims, allowing them to home in on their genitals, which were then chomped off with razor-sharp teeth.

 

Government environmentalists have since blamed the attacks on a species known as the Pacu fish from South America, which had then-recently been introduced to Papua New Guinea.

10.Chinese Hunter

In 1995, a Chinese hunter from a village in Shanxi province met his match- and death- when he trapped a snake by placing the butt of his gun on the back of its head. As his brother tried to place the snake into a sack, it thrashed its tail and accidentally connected with the trigger, blasting the hunter who was holding it down right in the face.

9.Indonesian Villager

In 1985, a villager from Syamtalira Bayu, Indonesia, decided that it was good idea to pick a fight with the Bull Elephant that had been raiding his crops. Swinging punches and slashing at it with a machete, he was surprised when the elephant responded by hurling him into the air with his trunk. When the injured villager fell back down to Earth, he was then trampled to death by the other elephants in the Bull’s troop.

8.Barry Campbell

Deaths by attacks from bears are still so frequent in the 21st century that most of them are regarded as being commonplace rather than bizarre. However, Barry Campbell, a sixty seven year old, considered this rule and though “you know what? Fuck this noise. This shit is going to be ridiculous”.

He was so shocked at seeing a bear on his porch trying to get into his house, he ran up a flight of stairs to grab his gun, slipped and cracked his skull, an injury which killed him instantly.

7.Louis Hestroffer

Everyone knows that a swan can allegedly break a man’s arm, but it appears that they can be a lot more deadly than that when they put their minds to it. In 1982, Louis Hestroffer was riding his motorbike near the town of Assenoncourt, France, when he was repeatedly buzzed by a low-flying swan, which caused him to fatally smash into a stone wall.

Yeah, don’t give us that loveheart shit, assholes

6.Indian Villagers

As we’ve already seen with that Indonesian villager, elephants can be deadly at the best of times, but mix pachyderms with booze and you are asking for trouble, as residents of the Indian village of Gauhati discovered in 1999. A herd of wild elephants came to the village, stole rice beer and went on a drunken rampage, trampling four villagers to death.

Boo motherf***ers! Me again!

5.Sierra Leone Construction Workers

A cartload of angry chimpanzees living in a Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone turned on the construction workers building an addition to their home. The chimps- some of who armed themselves with the workers tools- beat two humans to death and hospitalised five others before escaping from the sanctuary in 2006.

4.Jeff Cowan

Jeff Cowan was so shocked to see a wallaby hoping along an English country lane whilst he was driving towards Oxfordshire in 1995, that he lost his concentration and crashed his Volvo into a wall. The passenger in the car with him lived to tell the tale.

3.Leon Resnick

Leon Resnick was a thirty-one year old worker for a boat dealership in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. One cold morning in November 2001, Resnick was testing a jet-propelled water bike on a lake at Deerfield Beach. He was monitored by a co-worker with a radar gun who was clocking him at speeds of up to 88kph.

In the moment it took the co-worker to adjust the gun, Resnick was apparently struck in the face by a flying duck. According to the Sherriff’s spokesman, when they found the body of Resnick it looked like he “had been smashed in the face with a cinder block”. They also found the carcass of the duck and feathers all over the handlebars of the water bike.

2.Hannah Twynnoy

Hannah Twynnoy was the first person in England to be killed by a tiger. A barmaid working at a public house ironically named as The White Lion, located in Malmesbury, Hannah was a popular girl. In 1703, a travelling circus arrived to set up in the pubs grounds. The circus contained an exotic menagerie of animals, including a tiger. Hannah was fascinated by the striped beast but was warned against upsetting it.

However, she ignored the advice and took pleasure in riling the tiger by continuously poking it with a stick and throwing water over it. Unfortunately for Hannah, the tiger somehow broke free and mauled her to death.

1.Harold Davidson

The Rev. Harold Davidson was a Church of England priest who became known as the “Prostitutes Padre” when we was defrocked in 1932 for providing more than ministry to the various ladies of the night. Trading off his notoriety, Davidson went to Blackpool and made a living by being an attraction- either fasting in a barrel or apparently being roasted in an oven whilst a figure dressed as the devil prodded him with a pitchfork.

In 1937, Davidson had found work at Thompsons Amusement Park in Skegness, where he was billed as a modern “Daniel in a Lions Cage”. For his act, Davidson would enter a cage with two lions inside and give a speech about how he had felt that the Church of England had done him a great injustice. All went well until 28 July, when Davidson accidentally stood on one of the lions tails, causing the other to be startled and attack him. Although he came out of the cage alive, Davidson died a few days later.