1994's oddest suicide

[Endwar 005]

Zing!

Ragga fraggin tenchars

 

[Annex]

In my Law Enforcement class the prof actually put this on as the bonus question. He told us the story and asked us if we would rule it as a suicide or homicide.

 

[scherbchen]

...

seriously, this is the kind of story you can't make up.

 

[Harbringer]

I don't see where the problem is.....the old man killed a guy, nevermind what the guy was doing.............

 

[Annex]

Neither, manslaughter for the father who accidently killed someone.

manslaughter is homicide

I don't see where the problem is.....the old man killed a guy, nevermind what the guy was doing.............

Thats what I think, and I wrote that on my paper. I still got the bonus points, though.

 

[Onionsoilder]

If it wasn't for the fact that the man loaded the gun hoping his father would shoot his mother I might say homicide, but because the man was conspiring to commit murder - and his plan backfired and killed him - I would say he is guilty of killing himself, I.E. suicide.

 

[Harbringer]

I didn't realize what was going on or happened beforehand would even matter. I thought the law worked by looking at the shooter as being a neutral entity, and the victim a neutral entity and then decided whether the shooting was intended or accidental and then labeled as homicide or involuntary manslaughter.

 

[scherbchen]

well the "loading the gun, hoping his dad might one day pull the trigger" bit is mere conjecture, though, right? that is an assumption that can hardly be proven.

I'd go with involuntary manslaughter, if only because that sounds right to me. I have no actual knowledge of any law other than... well... none, to be honest.

 

[Dachs]

This story was in one of the Bathroom Readers some time ago. Been done? (I think I reproduced it for an eighth-grade math class.)

Still lulzy.

 

[tycoonist]

charge the old man for the attempted murder of his wife. i see no need to charge him for the murder of the son. the son got his wish (he died), why should the old man pay for that?

but then again, im all for euthanasia

 

[Phlegmak]

This was also in the movie Magnolia.

 

[Onionsoilder]

charge the old man for the attempted murder of his wife.

Why? He wasn't trying to kill her. I get charging him with abuse or something, but attempted murder?

 

[Mirc]

charge the old man for the attempted murder of his wife.

Read that again. He wasn't trying to kill her.

 

[BurnEmDown]

charge the old man for the attempted murder of his wife. i see no need to charge him for the murder of the son. the son got his wish (he died), why should the old man pay for that?

but then again, im all for euthanasia

It says in the article that most people that try to suicide and fail won't try it again, and that there was a safety net just below the guy when he was shot.

 

[Aegis]

This was also in the movie Magnolia.

I don't remember this being in Magnolia. I'll have to go watch it again to see if I missed it.

 

[KaiserElectric]

That's perhaps the oddest case of suicide I've ever seen.

 

[Endwar 005]

well the "loading the gun, hoping his dad might one day pull the trigger" bit is mere conjecture, though, right? that is an assumption that can hardly be proven.

I'd go with involuntary manslaughter, if only because that sounds right to me. I have no actual knowledge of any law other than... well... none, to be honest.

Actually, i think this may just justify its own class.... Involuntary suicide? And I agree with the bit about the father, there's no way they could prove that.

 

[scherbchen]

well the suicide attempt was pretty intentional, I'd say. assuming of course that we accept the premise that the son did not know about the net and did not want to merely make some kind of statement.

but you do raise an interesting point I did not even think about. if I were to take my own life I'd be pretty stringent on deciding on how I would go. some methods would certainly be more appealing to me than others yet the end result certainly remains the same. I might not even make the correct decision on how to go about it and an "intervention" such as the one in the OP might be more along the lines of what I had been envisioning. or not at all.

how do you judge that? does anybody even have a case? you certainly can't question the recently deceased though the way he wanted to do it was probably the hardest and most personal question he ever asked himself and you somehow have to respect that decision...

erm... welcome to the humour part of CFC. sorry about that.

 

[Narz]

Crazy stuff, I think it should be ruled homicide though.

And not to be a buzzkill but I don't find it particularly funny.

 

[Phlegmak]

I don't remember this being in Magnolia. I'll have to go watch it again to see if I missed it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_(film)

A 17-year-old boy, Sydney Barringer, attempts suicide by jumping off the roof of his apartment building; this attempt became a "successful homicide" when he was accidentally shot by his mother (Miriam Margolyes) as he fell past his own apartment window. His parents regularly argued and threatened each other with a shotgun that was normally kept unloaded. Unbeknownst to them, Sydney had loaded the gun a few days earlier hoping they would make good on their threats to kill one another. As a result, he unwittingly became an accomplice in his own murder. The irony is that a newly installed protective netting for window washers on the building's exterior below their apartment would have saved his life if he had not been hit by the shotgun blast that he himself had loaded.