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November 1998
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How The Accident Happened

Keith Jones contributes the following little saga:

In the summer of 1972, my father was working on a construction site in Nachadoches, Texas. As the story goes an electrician who was working on the site was going to repair a breach in a severed connection. Instead of turning off the power before he decide to casually step over the severed line, this boy wonder decided to reach for his tools which happened to be across the electrical connection. He never made it to the tools. Whe he tried casually to hop over the line, his legs gave out and he tripped, falling right onto the connection and completing the circuit. When the police arrived at the scene they were trying to make sense of the terrible tragedy. The supervisor of the crew “took charge of the situation” and decided to (rather emphatically) demonstrate exactly what took place. As boss excitedly went though the steps of what happened, he made it to the point where the man was killed, “And the man tried to hop over the line just like this..” when Zap! he was killed on the same damn connection.

I am sure this story is legit, the year may be a little off, but with a little research into the paper archives of Nachodoches,TX the first hand account should be found.


This page was last updated November 10, 1998.

home
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Darwin Awards
November 1998
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