Posted on 07/11/2009 8:19:04 PM PDT by Gordon Greene
A taxi driver has decapitated himself in his black cab in what appears to have been a gruesome suicide.
Police are treating the man's death as "non-suspicious"
The man, believed to be in his 30s, died in Southwark, southeast London, on Friday.
His body was found by police slumped in the car.
Police are treating the driver's death as suicide and are trying to trace his next of kin.
Officers were called at 12.40am to the horrific scene in Great Suffolk Street, where the car had crashed into a pillar.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "Officers attended and the driver was found dead inside the vehicle.
"The death is being treated as non-suspicious."
Officers are keen to determine if the dead man was a genuine black-cab driver.
:: The Samaritans said anybody who has been affected by the incident or is feeling distressed or suicidal can contact its helpline...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
Agreed!
Was he trying to spite his face?
Very easily. It isn't so much a matter of neatly slicing the head off, as it is forcefully tearing the head from the body.
In the American West, when they hanged criminals, executioners had to be very careful to use the right rope. If the drop was too high or the rope was too thin or too rigid, the head could tear clean from the body.
There were tables that showed the drop height taking the condemned criminal's weight into account to prevent it from happening.
Still it did happen from time to time. In 1901, Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum was a train robber and outlaw. He was caught and was sentenced to hang.
Ketchum gained weight in jail while waiting for his sentence to be carried out, and the executioners were inexperienced, so when he was hanged, his head came clean off. Only the hood, which had been pinned to his shirt, kept his head from rolling away.
There was a photographer on the scene and there are photos of him immediately before and after his hanging. Here is a short story with both photographs (^). The link is to page 1, the hanging photos are on page 2. Needless to say, they are graphic.
Two shots? I had only heard of one. And the one was a small, low powered handgun where he was shot through the soft part of his lower jaw, through his mouth and into his brain.
Youre way too paranoid
Ah, that's an excellent answer and explains it.
But I am NOT too paranoid. I am exactly paranoid enough.
I'm too cynical!
Realizing it was a UK story, I would have assumed such if “black” had been capitalized. Like you did with “President”, LOL!
This is the first thing I thought of. What’s wrong with me?
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