Darwin Award Application

Driver dies as vehicle rams up to rear bumper into apartments


<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px"> James Carbone / AP
Police and rescue workers survey the scene on New York's Long Island where a car is lodged in the second story of a building in Coram, N.Y., on Tuesday.

</TD><TD width="100%"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Updated: 10:50 p.m. CT Sept 12, 2006

<SCRIPT language=javascript> function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById("udtD"); if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,((''.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp('632937162476100000'); </SCRIPT>CORAM, N.Y. - A car hit a dirt hill at high speed and flew 200 feet into the second story of an apartment building on Tuesday, killing the driver, police said.
Two people in separate apartments at the time of the 9 a.m. crash escaped injury, and there were no injuries on the street.
Investigators did not know what led the driver, Vincent Pontillo Jr., to speed down a dead-end street. His 2004 Honda Accord, which was launched from a 4-foot dirt hill, penetrated the building up to its rear bumper, police spokesman Officer William Fairchild said.

 

Dad breaks leg trying to cure phobia <!-- END HEADLINE -->
<!-- BEGIN STORY BODY -->Wed Sep 13, 5:20 PM ET


LANTANA, Fla. - It seems a father's plan to cure his daughter's fear of heights fell short. Troy Stewart and his 10-year-old daughter were on their daily bike ride about 7:45 p.m. Monday when Stewart, 31, suggested they jump off a 15 foot bridge. Stewart held his daughter Meagan Stewart's hand as they jumped off the bridge into the Intracoastal Waterway, authorities said.
"At first he said, `Do you want to do it or not?'" Meagan said. "I thought, `It's kind of high,' and then he's like, `Trust me.'"
Meagan made the jump safely, but her father ended up with a broken leg. She rode her bike half a mile home and told her mother, Mandy Potter. Potter called authorities who found Stewart waiting on the edge of Lantana Bicentennial Park.
"In his mind, he was playing," Potter, 32, said of her partner of 10 years. "But I don't condone his child's play."
Stewart was not charged since Meagan jumped willingly. Officials from the state Department of Children & Families planned to interview Potter.
"This is an example of what not to do as a parent," police Capt. Andy Rundle said. "And let this be a lesson to everybody: Somebody's tried it, and it's not a good idea."
Meagan said she was not upset with her father, but she planned to have a talk with him when he returned home from the hospital.
"I'm going to tell him I don't think he should have done that and you should have learned your lesson," she said.

 

SYDNEY (AFP) - A British tourist rescued from the Australian outback had to be saved a second time when he returned to the wilderness to look for his belongings, it was reported.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the 50-year-old man was taken to Alice Springs hospital Wednesday morning after spending four nights lost in the rugged Northern Territory.
It was the same area north of Alice Springs where he was rescued last week after three nights in the outback.
The Sydney Morning Herald website reported that on both occasions the man, whom it named as Martin Lake, called police on his mobile phone to tell them he was lost, sparking major air and land searches.
Northern Territory police superintendent Richard Bryson said the man's second rescue was believed to be connected to the first.
"Because of his condition we haven't had an opportunity to drill down to the nitty gritty of his circumstances," he told the ABC.
"But in a general sense it's been proposed that he'd lost something on the first occasion and he'd taken it upon himself to go back to the area in an effort to locate it

 

Here, here. I totally concur with RH. We need to take steps now before this goes any further. We need legislation to ban Hondas, dirt, two story buildings, bridges, phobias, hiking and Australia. We need no more of this type of deviant stuff in our civilized world putting our good citizens in harm's way.