Big Bertha Ping! (or Big Bertha and Ping)
"Hold muh beer 'n watch this!" PING....
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Posted on 11/19/2002 3:12:52 PM PST by Weimdog
Vandalism ends in bizarre death BY TOBY MANTHEY / Lincoln Journal Star
A Lincoln man died Sunday afternoon after being injured about 12 hours earlier when a fragment of a golf club a friend was swinging to knock over mailboxes struck him in the side of his head, police said.
Lincoln police said Brian J. Brinker, 21, was seated in the right back seat of a vehicle and two friends were in the front when the club hit a mailbox and broke. A fragment ricocheted into the vehicle, causing a "puncture-type wound in (Brinker's) skull," Police Capt. David Beggs said. He would not identify the make of the vehicle.
The man who allegedly swung the club, 23-year-old Scott R. Philips, of Lincoln, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree assault, Beggs said. Philips was in the front passenger seat. Whether Philips will be officially charged will be determined by the County Attorney's Office today or Tuesday, Beggs said.
The driver of the vehicle, Anthony M. Harman, 22, of Lincoln, was not cited or arrested.
Police said officials at BryanLGH Medical Center East called the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office at 12:21 a.m. Sunday when Brinker was brought by Philips and Harman to the hospital and was unresponsive. Surgery was performed, but Brinker was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m.
Police do not know where the men were driving when the club fragment struck Brinker.
Harman and Philips initially said the incident happened outside the city, but later changed their accounts, police said. Authorities now believe it occurred inside the city limits, making it a police investigation.
"It's in northeast Lincoln, but we can't find it,"Beggs said. "If anyone has fresh damage to their mailbox, we'd urge them to give us a call."
Philips and Harman said they had hit three or four mailboxes before the club broke, Beggs said. Police do not know which part of the club struck Brinker.
Beggs said police have confiscated the vehicle and would obtain a warrant to search it for the club or other evidence.
Philips, 3028 Vine St., and Harman are listed as College of Business Administration students in the current University of Nebraska-Lincoln student directory. Brinker was not listed in the directory. No other information about him was available Sunday night.
It was unclear Sunday night if an autopsy would be performed on Brinker, Beggs said.
Reach Toby Manthey at 473-7395 or citydesk@journalstar.com.
Leni
I like that idea. But the solid steel mailbox is also a good one. The guy who hits it with a crowbar at 80 miles per hour will likely be vibrating for hours.
;-D
We had the same problem in our neighborhood, and my dad came up with a similar solution. He had the local welding shop fabricate a mailbox out of 1/2" armor plate. Had a monster hinge on the door. It was welded to a length of railroad rail (my dad used to represent the old Southern Railroad, and the shop just dropped off a section for him!) The rail was sunk in probably half a truckload of concrete. Dad spray painted the whole thing flat black. It looked very innocuous . . .
We found half a Louisville Slugger at the base of the box one day, half a shovel another, crowbars, you name it. One time they stuffed it full of M-80s. All it did was blow the door open. Dad would solemnly walk down to the box every Monday morning and repair the weekend's depredations with his can of spray paint.
Lots of folks asked my dad for the "recipe" and adopted his box plans. One neighbor two streets over heard a terrific crash one night -- two idiot teens in their mom's Country Squire wagon had gotten frustrated and rammed his mailbox with the car -- they were lying bleeding in the front seat in a pile of windshield fragments, and the railroad rail was basically in the center of that big old cast iron engine block . . .
That was before the days of free-roaming lawsuits, in the days of "them boys deserved EXACTLY what they got" and when they worked for 2-3 years to replace the car . . . didn't hurt the mailbox any . . . :-D
They probably will find a lawyer and sue the golf club manufacturer. Or the mailbox manufacturer. Or the car marker. Or somebody. Anybody but themselves.
Big Bertha Ping! (or Big Bertha and Ping)
I replaced a mailbox that one of these jokers demolished this year. If it happens again, I will buy one that will withstand a 747 hitting it.
Judging by the letters and e-mails Magro receives from satisfied customers, one of the motives behind splurging on an expensive and durable mailbox is the hope that troublemakers will learn of it the hard way—by swinging at it while leaning from a car traveling at a high rate of speed. "We've had it now for some 12 or so years," one pleased customer from Massachusetts wrote last December, "and have often been awakened in the middle of the night with the sound of a ball bat, pipe or some other implement hitting the box, followed shortly thereafter by a scream."Thats classic.
My Dad maintained that, "Experience is the schoolmaster of fools." Something about having to make every possible mistake all by myself.......
My wife said "But you forgot to tell them about the punk I saw afterwards with the lower half of his arm in a bandage.
I put that mailbox up in 1978 or so. It is still there, passively doing its job. We change its color every few years, out of sadism.
So, maybe I'll get sued. *shrug*
"I was maliciously destroying property, and the mailbox was not a collapsible one".
Somehow, I am not too worried about it...
just kidding, but it would be fun.
All sorts of fun until you hit one of the ones described by Clintons Are White Trash, AnAmericanMother or Gorzaloon, then you suddenly find yourself impaled about 2 feet forward of the blunt end of your lance!
Allow me to share a fond related memory. We had a group of kids who had done donuts on our lawn twice, each time less than a half hour after the local race track finished up for the night. We were ready for them the next time: my Dad had his Mossberg pump shotgun ready to go, and my two brothers and I were sitting by the front door with baseball bats at the ready. The vandals had forgotten to take weather into account; it had rained for three straight days that week, finishing up two days before their next attack, and the mud was still gooey on our front lawn.
I can still hear the sound of my Dad politely tapping that shotgun barrel on the driver's side window...State Troopers had to call a tow truck, the wheels were buried so deep, and the tow truck driver was the father of the kid driving the car. Ouch!
LMAO!
At any rate, it seems to me that there is some primal need to go raiding in young men.
Of course someone dressed up as a knight actually riding a horse and hitting the mail-boxes would be great Monty Python type absurdity.
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