Free Republic

RAWDON, Que. - A bride-to-be has plunged to her death, tumbling down from a cliff into a waterfall while wearing her wedding dress. The woman was being photographed Friday at Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, Que., which she had chosen as the backdrop for her wedding pictures. During the photo shoot, around 2 p.m., she slipped on some rocks and plummeted into the water. The falls, at their highest point, are just over 18 metres high. The immediate rescue team included firefighters and provincial police, and divers were soon on their way. The woman's body was found several hours later. A...

Michigan siblings killed in gasoline-soaked bonfire explosion at high school graduation party A celebration ended in sadness Saturday night in St. Clair Township, when recent high school graduate Savannah Blewett and her older brother died in a large bonfire explosion. St. Clair County Sheriff Tim Donnellon said in a release that 27-year-old Christopher Blewett poured a large amount of gasoline on a two-story pile of wood in his backyard and, according to witnesses, invited his sister to light it on fire. When she did, the gasoline exploded, scattering wood up to 100 yards and blowing out windows in the back...

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - A college student from Texas believes he is lucky to be alive after a terrible crash. He was texting and driving when his truck flew off of a cliff. Chance Bothe's truck plunged off of a bridge and into a ravine. One of the last things he typed indicated what almost happened to him. He wrote, "I need to quit texting, because I could die in a car accident." After the crash, Chance had a broken neck, a crushed face, a fractured skull, and traumatic brain injuries. Doctors had to bring him back to life three...

Riverside {california} firefighters were dispatched to the 4400 block of Linwood late Tuesday night, where they found a garage fully engulfed in flames. Turns out the resident of the home likes to buy a lot of gas when it’s cheap and store it in his garage — where he decided to have a cigarette, fire officials said.. Three barrels of gasoline – one 55-gallon and two 35-gallon – were stored in the garage. During the fire, there were two explosions, sending flames up as high as 80 feet, a Riverside Fire captain said. The fire, which was confined to the...

The parents of a woman who died at the “Haunted Hotel Ball” at the Palmer House Hilton in 2010 are suing the hotel and the event hosts. James and Deborah Duskey claim the death of their daughter Megan at the Halloween-themed ball was due to the negligence of the hotel and the event companies who hosted the party in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court. The suit names Hilton Worldwide, the Palmer House Hilton, Surreal Chicago and Adrenaline Y2K as the hosts of the party. Megan Duskey fell four floors to her death after she tried to...

A man was mauled to death by three tigers after breaking into their enclosure at a zoo in Copenhagen, police and staff at the zoo said on Wednesday. The victim, a 20-year-old Afghan who was given Danish nationality last month, was found lying on the floor ... "He was attacked by the three tigers... Police said they do not know why the man broke into the enclosure

LARGO | Surrounded by teenage friends on the back porch of his house, Thorin Montgomery was first up in a contest of Russian roulette. Right away, the .38-caliber revolver fired its round. Badly wounded, the 17-year old was rushed to the hospital Friday night. Keeping vigil, friends wrote wishes online that he might summon some sort of inner strength and pull through. But he died around 3 a.m. Sunday at Bayfront Medical Center. And friends who now dedicated Web posts to his memory struggled to reconcile how the teen with a bright smile and happy demeanor could be dead. "Truly...

Four years ago, Kent Couch made headlines by floating through the clouds in a lawn chair hoisted by party balloons from Oregon to Idaho. He's going to fly again, this time with a buddy sitting on a second lawn chair at his side. They are planning to take off July 14 from the parking lot of Couch's gas station and convenience store in Bend, Ore., the way he did in 2008 when he floated 235 miles to an Idaho farm field..."We can't hit above 18,000 feet (because of federal flight restrictions), but we can make a good run at, I...

A WOMAN zookeeper was mauled to death by a pack of wolves as she fed them in their enclosure. Eight of the wolves are thought to have surrounded and attacked the woman, who was in her 30s. Her body was found by a colleague — but the snarling pack would not let anyone near her. Eventually brave zoo workers formed a human chain and rushed the wolves, forcing them back. Jan Tengeborg, who organised the attempt to recover the body, said: “We couldn’t get into the enclosure because the wolves clearly did not want us in there. You can’t...

Rodney King, the man whose videotaped beating by police led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was found dead at the bottom of his pool, police said. Mr. King's fiancée found him at the bottom of the pool on Sunday morning at his home in Rialito, Calif. He was 47. "The preliminary investigation indicates that this is a drowning and there are no signs of foul play," said Rialto Police Sgt. Paul Stella. In 1991, a video of police beating Mr. King after a freeway chase in Los Angeles rocketed across the world, stoking national tensions over race and police...

SOUTH OF ALAMO — A 17-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself with a semi-automatic handgun Monday night when the single round he fired at a butane tank ricocheted and hit him in the head, authorities said.

South Africa: Man Photographs Cheetahs Attacking Wife The photos taken by a tourist from Scotland show his wife on the ground, hair flying, blood on her neck, with two cheetahs nearby (Violet D'Mello poses with a cheetah while being photographed by her husband Archibald during a visit to Kragga Kamma game reserve near Port Elizabeth, South Africa.) JOHANNESBURG — The photos taken by a tourist from Scotland show his wife on the ground, hair flying, blood on her neck, with two cheetahs nearby. The Port Elizabeth Herald reported Friday that Violet D'Mello of Aberdeen, Scotland, was attacked by cheetahs on...

A suspected Southern California copper thief has been electrocuted after climbing a power pole and using bolt cutters on a live wire, which also caused a power outage. The San Bernardino County Sun ( http://bit.ly/IEc5yx) says the body of 26-year-old Robert Buchanan and bolt cutters were found early Monday at the base of a utility pole in an unincorporated area near Fontana. Nearly 3,100 Southern California Edison customers were without power for about 90 minutes. San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators say Buchanan apparently used the bolt cutters to cut live wires from the pole. A sheriff's spokeswoman says Edison wires...

Already they have interrupted Michele Bachmann and drawn a withering putdown from Newt Gingrich as “all noise, no thought.” Now, to the dismay of Iowa Republicans, Occupy activists in Des Moines are vowing to expand their protests as Republican presidential hopefuls converge on the state that speaks first in the race for the party’s presidential nomination. “The 99 percent have woken up, and we’re not going to take it anymore,” Occupy activist Stephen Toothman of Des Moines said as an advance guard met Tuesday to decide which candidates to target in the coming week. Hundreds of Occupy activists from at...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Rescuers battled high waves Sunday as they searched for 200 asylum seekers still missing after their wooden ship sank off Indonesia's main island of Java. So far only 33 people have been plucked alive from the choppy waters alive. Survivors told authorities they had been trying to reach Australia, said Lt. Alwi Mudzakir, a maritime police official who was heading rescue operations. He blamed Saturday's accident on overloading, saying the vessel - packed with 250 men, women and children from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey - appeared to have been carrying more than twice its capacity....

WESLEY CHAPEL — A 78-year-old man was shot in a bizarre accident early Saturday when a dog bumped a rifle and caused it to fire, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Billy E. Brown of Dade City, a friend and a bulldog set out before dawn to hunt deer, which has been a tradition of theirs for more than 25 years. They were traveling down a bumpy, rocky road in a pickup truck to their hunting stands when the dog got excited and bumped a high-powered Browning .308-caliber rifle. The bullet struck in the right thigh as...

A South African farmer has been killed by the pet hippopotamus he raised from the age of five months, and which he once described as being 'like a son' to him. Humphrey the Hippo gouged owner Marius Els, 41, to death by repeatedly biting him in a vicious attack on Saturday night. The farmer's mutilated body was discovered submerged in a river running through his 400-acre farm in rural South Africa. ... Hippos are considered to one of the world's most dangerous animals. They are, by nature, very aggressive -... They commonly attack humans with no apparent provocation, usually using...

A suspect who was killed in a car wreck following a home invasion on Oct. 4, died of a self-inflicted gun shot, not from the accident, according to Clayton County police. Kenneth Kenard Fortson, 21, died when the pickup truck he and three other suspects were traveling in overturned on Roberts Drive across from Riverdale High School. That accident happened after the three men had allegedly forced entry into a home on Fairway Pointe Drive in Riverdale and demanded money and a video game, according to police. "He was found with a weapon in his hand, after the truck crashed,"...

SAN DIEGO — An autopsy is tentatively scheduled Tuesday on the body of the man who fell to his death from a parking structure at the Community Concourse at City Hall downtown Monday afternoon. Officials with the Medical Examiner’s Office said the man fell after losing his balance while trying to hang flyers on outside walls. San Diego police, however, said Monday that the man committed suicide. Witnesses told police the victim was possibly hanging a sign from the eighth floor of the building structure when he fell about 3:15 p.m. Flyers that said “Important message to intelligent earthlings from...

JENNINGS COUNTY, Ind. -- A southern Indiana woman was seriously injured in an accident police said was caused by car surfing. Investigators said 20-year-old Emily Jackson and a 19-year-old woman were car surfing on the roof of a Subaru station wagon that another 19-year-old was driving. It happened just after 11 p.m. Wednesday at Muscatatuck County Park in North Vernon, Ind. Jackson was flown to an Indianapolis hospital with a serious head injury. The crash is under investigation and police said it will be forwarded to the Jennings County prosecutor’s office for review.