Posted on 11/30/2004 4:57:24 AM PST by scooter2
KENT - "Philip has been a kid who tinkers with things ever since he was little," a grieving Claudia Quinn told KOMO 4 News Monday night after her son's bizarre and tragic death.
Sunday, 24-year-old Philip Quinn was tinkering with a lava lamp at his home in Kent. His girlfriend and his parents became worried when they couldn't find him and couldn't get him to answer his phone.
Claudia and Bill Quinn drove from their home in Auburn to check on their youngest son. They thought maybe he'd just overslept. They were devastated by what they found.
"I looked around the corner and saw his body slumped there in the corner and just couldn't believe what I saw," said Quinn's father.
"There was glass from the kitchen clear to the living room," his mom told us. "They said it appeared that a piece of glass punctured his heart."
Philip, in a fatal act of experimentation, had placed a lava lamp on the kitchen stove. When used properly and heated only by a small lightbulb, 40 watts in most cases, a lava lamp is essentially harmless: a mix of wax or oil and water sealed in a glass bottle with a small air space at the top of the bottle to allow for the liquid to expand under heat.
"It wasn't bubbling fast enough for him," his mom guesses. "Because when we walked in the stove was on at the lowest setting."
Even at the lowest setting the amount of heat was too much. As Philip watched the lava lamp on his stove the pressure began to build too much and too fast until it essentially exploded like a grenade, showering him with glass and sending a large shard deep into his chest.
He was found just a few feet away from the stove. He bled to death and never had a chance to call for help. The King County Medical Examiner has ruled the death accidental.
Police found no evidence of drug or alcohol use.
Philip Quinn leaves behind a 15-month old daughter. He was also the youngest of three brothers. Funeral services are planned for this Saturday.
Hey now...give the guy a break!
I couldn't type a *short* sentence backwards if my life depended on it!...LOL!
Bingo. I'm sure some lier lawyer will be hammering that very point home.
Why? Name one real advantage to being 'an adult' all the time.
I just had to read your #89 again for a good belly laugh!
Sad, he loved to tinker but he didn't like reading warning labels?
I never said one should "be an adult all the time."
However, I think it's better to be an adult "all the time" than to be a punk about a tragedy like this.
Perhaps you should pay closer attention to what someone is saying before you make a comment about it.
To avoid painful flame wars, you should do it "all the time." Even if it's "adult."
Yes ma'am.
Where's the fun in *that*?
Literally LOL here...
Thanks for a little civility on this thread. Most of the posters here seem to think a tragic accident and the loss of a son is funny. I don't and am sometimes ashamed of some of the comments fellow freepers make. They wouldn't think it was so funny if it was one of their loved ones.
24 years old and he did this? How sad.
I'd have been a shoe-in to win "America's Funniest Videos" if I'd had a camera running the time my wife and I were cleaning the 26-gallon fishtank, and the cat jumped on top expecting the lid to still be on... She did a perfect "swish" right into the water, never even touched the sides, and submerged completely. For an instant there was a big cat-shaped hole in the water above her, then the water closed in above her, leaving her suspended pretty much in the center of the tank. As luck would have it, she was facing the front, and the look on her face as she stared out the front glass with a stunned "WTF??" expression was priceless. After perfect comedic timing (about 1.5 seconds of stunned motionlessness suspended in the tank), she kicked once trying to jump out, but hit nothing but water. Then she kicked again and got a good footing on the bottom, and came launching out of the tank like a rocket followed by a fountain of about three gallons of water.
My wife and I were literally rolling on the floor laughing, since we had seen the whole thing from start to finish. We had even seen her coming and had enough time to think, "oh. god. no...", but not enough time to do anything to stop it.
OMG! ROFLMAO!! I have three cats and even though I love them and would hate for any animal to be hurt, THAT IS HILARIOUS!
No, the accident and the loss are not funny -- but the *weirdness* is. We're capable of feeling more than one thing at the same time. And I think this says it all:
"Life does not cease to be funny when someone dies, anymore than is ceases to be serious when someone laughs."I agree entirely with ladiesview61's post, even as I'm snickering at the strangeness of "death by lavalamp".
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Anglo-Irish socialist playwright, critic, wit and man of letters; Nobel Prize recipient (Literature, 1925)
And yes, y'all have permission to get whatever laughs my own demise may afford, whenever the time comes.
Whoa.
Actually, that's "sir."
How would you feel if your son had a chunk of glass explode into his heart? How would you feel if you knew people were laughing about it?
I'd say your sense of empathy is dangerously close to ... "null and void."
just so u know u insensitive wank ...Phillip (my cousin) was an amazing father. The reason he put the thing on the stove was because the liquid inside had settled to the bottom of the lamp and a light bulb couldnt get it to bubble up .... he was doing it because his daughter loved to watch it and he wanted to fix it for her... everything he did was for his family. and we loved him for it
I wasn't commenting on the effort to fix the lava lamp. I was responding to the details in the article which indicated that the deceased and his "girlfriend" were neither married nor living together but had a small child together. Sorry about your loss, but that doesn't sound much like responsible fatherhood to me.
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