Boy dies after being hit by falling lamp-post

One-year-old's buggy was being pushed down street in west London when tragedy happened

• Press Association
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 February 2010 10.15 GMT
• Article history

A one-year-old boy who was hit by a falling lamp-post in west London on Tuesday has died today.

The baby, whose name has not been released, was struck when the lamp-post fell in Chiswick.

A 62-year-old woman, who suffered a back injury in the accident, was taken to hospital. She was discharged yesterday.

The boy was airlifted to the Royal London hospital, in east London. He was pronounced dead at about 5.30am.

"A baby boy seriously injured by a falling lamp-post in Chiswick has sadly died," a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

"A postmortem examination will be scheduled in due course."

The woman, who was treated at Charing Cross hospital, in west London, was not related to the baby and was not pushing his buggy when the lamp-post fell.

A police spokesman said the baby was with a carer, who was not injured.

The incident, which happened at the junction of Heathfield Terrace and Sutton Court Road, is being investigated by officers from Hounslow CID and the specialist crime directorate, along with the Health and Safety Executive.

A Hounslow council spokeswoman said the incident was "an awful tragedy" and the council was co-operating fully with the investigations.

She said work was being carried out in the area as part of the Turnham Green traffic and transport improvement scheme, designed to provide faster journeys for bus passengers.

Pet dog took home a human head

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2010/02/19

POLICE in King William’s Town have called on anyone missing a male relative to help identify a head found in a village about 10km outside the town.

The head was found by a dog, and dragged to its owner’s house.

A Ndevana resident said she got the shock of her life on Sunday when her dog arrived at her home carrying the grisly find.

The resident immediately alerted the police.

Police spokesperson Captain Thozama Solani said the head was badly decomposed, but still had flesh on it.

“It has been kept at a State mortuary in Bhisho.”

Solani said there were no reports of missing people in the area and police were baffled as to where the dog found the head.

A forensic team has been trying to determine what happened to the body.

She said at this stage police were not sure if the body had been buried or not.

Families with missing relatives are asked to go to the Bhisho mortuary and identify the head. — Msindisi Fengu

Funeral parlour man ‘violated three bodies’

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2010/02/16

A MAN working at a funeral parlour in Mthatha was arrested after he was caught allegedly violating corpses.

The 41-year-old man had been employed by the parlour in Vulindlela Heights to clean bodies.

He was arrested after his colleague caught him allegedly having sex with one of the bodies on Sunday morning.

Later it was established that two other corpses had also been violated.

Police spokesperson Superintendent Mzukisi Fatyela said the man, who cannot be named, had been charged with three counts of “violating deceased persons”.

The owner of the parlour declined to comment when approached by the Daily Dispatch.

The suspect is scheduled to appear in the Mthatha Magistrate’s Court today.

By BONGANI HANS, Mthatha bureau. bonganih@dispatch.co.za

Pig out... Photograph: Murdo Macleod

A veterinarian has ruined Matthew Herbert's plan to document the sounds of a pig's life, from birth to post-mortem supper party. The celebrated electronic musician has been forced to cancel a "crucial" portion of his One Pig project, after a vet forbade Herbert from recording the animal's slaughter.

"Rather frustratingly, and despite many phone calls, we have found it impossible to find an abattoir to allow us to record the death of the pig," Herbert wrote on his site this week. "We found one farmer willing to let us record, but then the attending vet did not allow it."

While Herbert's previous projects have recycled sounds from grave-sites, parliament and the human body, One Pig is perhaps his most ambitious recording. "I will be there at [the pig's] birth, during its life, present at its death, and during the butchery process," he explained on his website. "Its body will then be given to chefs new and old," including Fat Duck's Heston Blumenthal, "[and] there will be a feast. Maybe a pair of shoes and a drum from the skin, and a toothbrush from its bristles, and ink from its blood." Herbert also previously promised a flute from its bones.

While it all may sound like a grisly joke, Herbert has not approached the process with levity. "For me the death was always a crucial part of the project," he wrote. "It was the part I was looking forward to the least, but the part I felt was most pertinent in my understanding of this life."

Born in mid-August, Herbert's pig was finally killed away from the microphones earlier this week. As his one-line post reads: "The pig is now dead." It will now only live in sound.

By Jaya Narain

Last updated at 10:50 PM on 26th January 2010

Tragic: Megan Williams was dancing to Lady Gaga songs when she put the cord around her neck

A schoolgirl accidentally hanged herself with a dressing gown cord in a tragic accident as she danced round her bedroom listening to her favourite music.

Megan Williams, 10, was dancing to Lady Gaga songs when she put the cord around her neck.

The cord, which was tied to a bunk bed, tightened as she danced around and strangled her to death.

The alarm was raised when her 15-year old brother ran downstairs to their mother Lisa saying: 'Megan's hanged herself.'

A coroner said the accident graphically illustrated the dangers of children playing around with cords.

Mrs Williams tried to revive her daughter using tips she had seen on television but the schoolgirl died later in hospital.

She fought back tears as she relieved last May's tragedy at the inquest in Manchester.

Megan - described as a 'little Princess' - and her two sisters had just returned from school and went upstairs to play in her bedroom.

Mrs Williams said the children tied the dressing gown to the bunk bed and would often swing from it.

She said: 'The kids also used to tie the cord to the bunk bed to swing from one bed to another. I did actually cut it down once but they just put it up again. One time I put the cord in the bin. Then they must of taken it out and put it up again.

'That day I know she was dancing as she often does, I could hear her on the floor boards, I could hear her favourite chart music.'

Her brother discovered her lifeless body hanging from the dressing gown cord and immediately told his mother.

Mrs Williams said: 'I remember thinking he was joking and waiting for him to change then I realised something wasn't right. He then repeated: "Megan's hung herself" then I really knew something was up.'

She found her daughter's body resting on the edge of the bottom bunk still in her school uniform with the navy blue dressing gown cord round her neck.

She said: 'Her lips were blue. I shouted something like:  "Oh My God. No!" I saw the cord around her neck, I lifted it off her and saw a red mark on her neck.'

Megan was rushed to hospital in a critical condition but her life support machine was switched off 24 hours later.

The inquest heard one of her daughters later admitted that she had tied the dressing gown cord to the top bunk, with a loop in the bottom of it so she could put her leg into the loop and pull herself up.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Nigel Meadows said: 'There is nothing to suggest that Megan had deliberately tried to harm herself. This is an illustration of the significant dangers and risks of playing around with ligatures.

'The ligature had been placed there either by her or one of her siblings, she had put her head through the loop and was just leaning forward.

'It was unknown to her that that it was going to cause significant problems for her and was going to result in her going unconscious. She wouldn't have appreciated the risk, she probably was just messing about, there was nothing she could do at that point.'

Mr Meadows told Mrs Williams she should be commended for trying her best to save her daughter's life.

He said: 'You should be commended for the responsible thing you did in giving her mouth to mouth because many parents in those circumstances go into blind panic.

'But you really did all the sensible things and in fact you gave Megan the best chance of being resuscitated.'

In a statement Mrs Williams said: 'Our whole family are devastated by such a tragic event.  Not a day will go by without us thinking about the joy Megan brought into our lives. She was a chatterbox and really mischievous.'

Family Unwittingly Handed Bag of Personal Effects that Included Deceased's Brain; Realized Due to Odor

(AP)  A New Mexico family is suing two funeral homes over a gruesome incident in which members unwittingly accepted a bag containing a relative's brain and only became aware of it by the odor a day later.

Funeral homes in New Mexico and Utah, where the woman died, are blaming each other for the mistake. Both have been named in the lawsuit.

"This is just a sad tragedy," plaintiffs attorney Richard Valle said Wednesday. "This almost feels like something you'd read about in a Stephen King book."

The suit was filed Monday in state District Court in Albuquerque. According to the complaint, the woman's relatives "smelled a foul odor coming from the bag" they received from New Mexico's DeVargas Funeral Home and Crematory of the Espanola Valley.

The woman, identified by her initials M.F.R., died in a car accident in Utah on Sept. 28.

Funeral home owner Johnny DeVargas didn't immediately return telephone messages seeking comment but denied any fault to the Albuquerque Journal, saying a Utah funeral home was responsible.

"We inherited the problem from Utah," DeVargas said. "We are a very reputable company and we were dealt a bad hand."

In addition to the New Mexico funeral home, the lawsuit also names as defendants Serenicare Funeral Home in Draper, Utah, and Inman Shipping Worldwide, an Ohio-based shipping company that transported the body to northern New Mexico.

A woman who answered the telephone after business hours Wednesday at Inman's call center said nobody from the company was available to comment.

Serenicare owner Dick Johnson said his firm's action was typical within the industry.

Characterizing the brain as "75 percent water," he said the woman's brain went into a bag because it had sustained substantial trauma from the crash.

"Rather than try to reinsert the brain into a damaged head, it is common practice to ship it inside a bag," he said.

He said said the bag containing the brain was placed in a casket with the rest of the remains for transport to New Mexico and eventual burial.

Johnson also said when someone has died in a violent crash, there's usually blood "and who knows what" on clothing or other items, so his employees typically sit down with relatives of the victim and encourage them to let the funeral home discard the bag rather than accept it.

He also denied that the Utah funeral home combined the brain and personal items in a single bag.

"I think once all the discovery takes place, it will become evident there was some negligence at that end," Johnson said. "We feel bad. We don't know what could have been done differently, but we follow standard industry practice."

During a viewing in New Mexico, the lawsuit says a DeVargas employee returned the personal belongings to a relative "in an unsealed bag." The relative "left the bag of the personal belongings in his truck until after the burial."

One day after interment, relatives noticed the smell and opened the bag.

"Plaintiffs ... experienced shock, horror and great fear upon learning that decedent's entire body had not been buried," the lawsuit says.

The brain later was buried with the woman's body.

A Greek man dressed in animal hide was mistakenly shot dead while out hunting wild boar for a Christmas dinner.

By Paul Anast in Athens 

Published: 4:57PM GMT 20 Dec 2009

Man was mistaken for a wild boar Photo: CHRISTOPHER JONES

Police said members of a shooting party made up of families opened fire when Christos Constantinou, 49, moved through the undergrowth.

They are thought to have been confused by the fact the victim was disguised in dark goat skins, which are used to camouflage and to mislead their prey.

The groups had fanned out in pairs of two to track down an animal for the traditional festive dinner when the accident happened.

Police in the northern Greek town of Nemea, Chalkidiki, said Mr Constantinou was pronounced dead upon arrival at hospital.

Two unidentified men, aged 25 and 28, were detained and were being questioned.

The moral of this story: keep away from hunts when dressed in animal skins.