In a panicked 911 call, Gary Coleman's wife describes the scene after the former child star apparently fell and split the back of his head open, spilling blood "everywhere" and causing her to fear for his life."I don't want him to die. I'm freaking out," she said.
CLICK HERE to hear the full 911 call.
Price said Coleman was initially unconscious and "bubbling" at the mouth.
During the more than five minute conversation with dispatchers, Price said Coleman regained consciousness, sat up and tried to stand, despite her protestations.
"He's sitting up now, but his head's all bloody in the back... I looked at the back of his head and saw [it] all bloody and gross" she said.
"Gary, don't move. Stay there, OK? You have to keep pressure on your head," she said at one point arguing with the former star of "Diff'rent Strokes." Coleman's groaned words are not clear in the call.
Coleman, 42, was rushed to a hospital and placed on life support but passed away two days later, on May 28, at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center from an intracranial hemorrhage.
Sleepwalkers have been known to execute a variety of tasks, from preparing a midnight snack to making phone calls, all while completely asleep. However, one Wisconsin man's sleepwalking tendencies contributed to his unfortunate death. Timothy Brueggeman, a 51-year-old electrician, sleepwalked out of his home in Hayward wearing only his underwear and a fleece shirt. His body was found late Tuesday morning about 190 yards from his rural home.
With temperatures around -16°F, Brueggeman died of hypothermia.
"How in the hell can a guy walk out in 20-below zero and not wake up?" asked Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle.
Investigators found a possible answer in Brueggeman's bedroom: a bottle of Ambien. However, they have not determined if he took the medication on the night of his death.
Ambien is the most-prescribed sleeping pill in the country and has been linked to hundreds of cases of sleepwalking. Sanofi-Aventis, which produces the drug, insists Ambien is safe when taken as directed and not mixed with alcohol or other drugs.
Ed Lesniak admitted that his friend, who was plagued with insomnia, sometimes drank when taking the sleep aid.
"He was like a lot of us," Lesniak said. "He'd stop off after work or having a couple throughout the evening and then take a pill to go to sleep."
This wasn't Brueggeman's first dangerous sleepwalking incident. Last summer, he drove his pickup truck into the side of his own garage. Brueggeman's mother had advised him to stop taking Ambien after the incident.
Former morgue attendant Kenneth Douglas - - who worked in an Ohio funeral home from 1976 to 1992 - - faces charges for sexually abusing corpses.The more recent charges are based on DNA evidence. Prosecutor Joe Deters told the Associated Press the case is "just beyond belief."
"I'm sure there are more," he said. "I'm certain of it, but we'll never be able to prove it."
The remains were found covered by sheets in various parts of the house in Evanston on Friday but no foul play was suspected.
Authorities said one of the siblings was last seen alive in the 1980s, the second in 2003 and the third in May.
The woman living in the house, described as "upwards of 90 years of age," was cooperating in the investigation and was taken to a facility for care.
Authorities, who did not release the names of the deceased, said a care worker had alerted them to the situation. Autopsies were due to be performed on Saturday.
Mange Ram lost consciousness in the stampede triggered by rumours of a landslide that caused panic among thousands of pilgrims climbing a steep mountain path.
The 19-year-old told the Times of India newspaper he awoke in a hospital morgue after Sunday's tragedy at the Naina Devi shrine in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
He said: "When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for post-mortem.
"My throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed.
"They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that!"
Sat Pal Aggarwal, a doctor on the pilgrimage, said few checks were carried out to see if victims were alive and might have been saved.
"People were dumped quite haphazardly into trucks without following any procedure or checking if they were alive," he said to the paper.
The pilgrims continued their journey just a couple of hours after the corpses were cleared.
The temple, devoted to the goddess Naina Devi, sits on a hilltop in the Himalayas and devotees must climb a narrow stairway to reach it. It has been the site of previous deadly accidents.
Three years ago, 257 Hindu devotees, mainly women and children, were crushed to death in a stampede at a religious pilgrimage in western India.
The Personal Urn is an eerie recreation of your head, with space inside for your remains. Just imagine an artist's rendering of your eyes gazing eternally on your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and so on . . . at least until one of your descendants sells the house and leaves you in it. Because, really, who wants to bring that creepy staring head with them? It costs $2,600, but there's a smaller version available for $600. Call it "Mini You."
Meanwhile, an alert reader at The Consumerist found a direct link to what appears to be the manufacturer, ThatsMyFace.com, who has a whole line of lifelike recreations of your head that can be used for everything from pencil holders to a head with a fake brain in it, just for laughs. These are much cheaper than the urn.
The blue suit and black boots were right, but mourners at a retired trucker's funeral suspected they were gazing at the wrong man.Some friends and family members kissed the body, despite whispers that something seemed amiss.
After a two-hour viewing Tuesday, the funeral home came clean: It had brought in the wrong casket to the church.
After the revelation, neither Kenneth "Tex" Roberts' family nor the body were in any shape for a final farewell, so the service was postponed."They tried to make us believe that it was him. I was so sure that it wasn't," widow Janie Holsey, 62, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "But ... I've never handled anybody that died."
The man in the casket looked older and taller than Roberts, an 80-year-old Army veteran known for his playful spirit and eagerness to lend a hand.
Holsey insists that she questioned the funeral home.
"I know he didn't look like that," Holsey said. "It was a fiasco ... a nightmare."
The James L. Hawkins Funeral Home Funeral Home, which handled arrangements, declined to comment. The family of the other man involved in the switch did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Roberts, who had 11 children and stepchildren, had been relatively healthy until his death Monday of apparent heart problems, said Holsey's sister, Edith Nelson.
"Everyone enjoyed him. He was just so funny. He made everybody laugh," she said.
Amid the chaos of the casket-switch Tuesday, two of Roberts' 56 grandchildren collapsed and were taken to hospitals. A grandson, a young adult with a history of seizures, remained hospitalized Wednesday, but a granddaughter with asthma troubles was released, Nelson said.
The family is now making new plans for his burial. They hope to arrange a proper funeral for their patriarch.
"We don't want to make two mistakes," Holsey said.
CORNING, Calif. - Authorities said relatives of a deceased Tehama County woman cremated her remains on a makeshift barbecue and continued collecting her retirement checks.Ramona Allmond's daughter and grandson were arrested Sunday on suspicion of embezzlement, elder abuse and disposing of a body without a permit, among other charges. They are being held at the Tehama County Jail in Red Bluff on $30,000 bail, with arraignment set for Thursday.
Sheriff's Capt. Paul Hosler says the 84-year-old Allmond likely had died of natural causes, though investigators are still trying to determine the cause of death.
Hosler says her daughter, 50-year-old Kathleen Allmond, and her grandson, 30-year-old Tony Ray, told investigators they left the body on her bedroom floor for a week before cremating the remains in their backyard fire pit. They then covered the pit and remains with soil and planted a tree on top, according to investigators. The family's home sits in the midst of a 10-acre olive grove, remote from neighbors.
Skull added to necklace?
Detectives say the daughter also fashioned a two-inch piece of her mother's skull into a necklace. Hosler said Ray took a photograph of Kathleen Allmond wearing the necklace, as well as a beaded wire tiara that she believed would ward off radio waves, to post on a social networking Web site.
"It gets really weird when you have a piece of mom's skull hanging around your neck," Hosler said. "I'm not aware of any religion that allows you to burn your family members in the backyard and collect their pension."
Investigators said they kept collecting her monthly retirement checks amounting to more than $25,000 since the elderly woman died in December.
Detective Richard Knox said they may have been trying to honor the woman's desire to die at home and be cremated.
Deputies arrested the pair after the dead woman's son asked deputies for a welfare check because he had not heard from his mother since December. Hosler said his suspicions were further aroused last week when he called and Kathleen Allmond pretended she was the 84-year-old woman.
A Montenegrin man made an unsuccessful suicide attempt in front of shocked funeral home staffers after he purchased a coffin, climbed in and shot himself.
Milo Bogisic paid cash for the casket at Palma Funerals in Podgorica before he wrote out his obituary and climbed into the coffin. He then put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.The 52-year-old man survived the blast when the bullet passed through his chin and nose, missing his brain, Ananova reports.
Police said Bogisic was having family problems and was even more devastated when he “hadn’t managed to end it all.”
To add insult to injury, the funeral home refused to give him a refund on the coffin.
Under the trees at Dunedin Country Club, Chris Long poured his dad into a golf shoe. At the 10th hole he sprinkled the ashes next to the sand trap. "Dad was always good around the green,'' Long said.
For a half century, Jim Long was a fanatical golfer who played every day if he could. He was especially good with short irons from the rough or sand trap.
"We called him Houdini,'' one of his oldest friends, Phil Desreaux, said from the lip of the green. "If he got into trouble, he could always escape.''
Almost always. On Sept. 7, as he got ready to putt for a birdie, Jim Long dropped dead. He was 70.
A few days later, his family and hundreds of friends gathered to say goodbye at the golf course. They told stories about how he drew faces on his golf balls and always carried a bottle of Jim Beam in his bag. They wept, laughed and toasted his memory.
A few spoke in reverent tones about his new set of Adams golf clubs with the graphite shafts.
"He didn't tell me he bought them,'' his wife, Joann, was telling people. "I just noticed them one day. He'd put them on the Master Charge. Kind of sneaky.'' In the endless chess game called marriage, she considered running over to Macy's and buying herself a new outfit in revenge.
They had met in 1984. A Canadian, Jim was on a Florida golf vacation. He was divorced. So was she. At a nightclub he asked for a dance. They married four months later. He owned an architectural hardware consulting business in Canada but was happy to move to Florida and its year-round golfing climate. She was okay with her role as golf widow.
Jim was funny, and he was good to her, but he wasn't perfect. Joann fussed at him whenever he reached for a Marlboro. Riding a golf cart was his primary source of exercise. He ate too much Breyers vanilla ice cream and watched too much TV. On the night before he died, she fixed him his favorite meal: grilled chicken and fresh corn cut from the cob. Even after one heart attack and a pacemaker, he feared no pat of butter.
On Sept. 7, a Sunday, he drove his personal golf cart from the house to the golf course two blocks away to meet Whitey Williams and Billy Turner, the other members of his regular threesome.
Jim double-bogeyed the first and second holes. He usually shot in the low 80s, but today his game was off.
On the seventh, he told his companions his latest story:
"A long-married couple are fighting because hubby has forgotten their anniversary. Wifey tells him there had better be something waiting in the driveway tomorrow morning — something that can go 0 to 200 in six seconds.
"Next morning, she sees a package on the driveway. Must be the keys to a new sports car. She can't wait. With shaking hands she opens the package and discovers — a bathroom scale.''
Jim bogeyed the 364-yard, par-four ninth. He was starting to play better, but he complained about an aching back and a cold sweat. His friends suggested a cool drink and a rest. Jim didn't want to miss any golf.
His drive exceeded 220 yards on the par 5, 477-yard 10th hole. His second shot, with a 3-wood, floated to the edge of the green. Now a graceful 9-iron left him 8 feet from the pin — and a birdie.
He grabbed his putter and climbed onto the green.
He fell right next to the hole. In life, he never believed in mulligans; Billy Turner's attempts to revive him failed.
Last Friday at dusk, while the memorial was still going strong at the clubhouse, Jim's family and closest friends headed quietly for the 10th green. A slight breeze rustled the Spanish moss hanging from the oaks. The cicadas sang a requiem.
Jim's son, Chris, sprinkled more ashes from his dad's size 10 FootJoys. "There's still plenty of Dad left to go around,'' Chris said, handing off the shoes to Tom Shores and Phil Desreaux.
Shores, Jim's son-in-law, lifted the flag. Desreaux, Jim's old friend from Canada, poured in the ashes.
Hole in one.
A convicted murderer on death row will have his body turned into fish food and fed to goldfish, all for the sake of art.Gene Hathorn, 47, who was convicted of killing his father, stepmother and stepbrother in 1985, has given his consent to artist Marco Evaristti to use his body as an "art installation" in part of a wider project on capital punishment.
Should Hathorn's final appeal fail, Mr Evaristti would deep-freeze Hathorn's body and then turn it into fish food which visitors at the exhibition could feed to goldfish.
Mr Evaristti, a Chilean-born artist living in Denmark, hopes to begin work within a year if Hathorn is refused an appeal for the third time.
The pair met when Mr Evaristti was researching the longest serving inmates on Texas' infamous death row.
He first visited Hathorn in April this year and when he first suggest the idea to Hathorn, he apparently agreed immediately.
Mr Evaristti said: "Gene Hathorn's story is a powerful one but it is not his story that is as important for me as the system that exists in a society such as America's in such a vulgar and primitive way, the system, of killing people like this. I wanted to raise awareness of the fact there are people killed legally in our Western civilisation."
He added: "He wants to be a part of this art. It's the last thing he can do for society and he views it as positive."
There are doubts Mr Evaristti will be able to use Hathorn's remains in such a way but he is prepared for legal proceedings.
In the meantime, he is helping raise £125,000 for an investigation into events surrounding the circumstances of Hathorn's conviction, in the hope it may lead to an appeal, and has so far raised £52,000 through drawings produced by Hathorn.
The artist said details such as the sexual abuse Hathorn experienced at the hands of his father, an alleged Ku Klux Klan member, was not included in court proceedings leading to his convictions.
Mr Evaristti has been involved in a number of controversial exhibitions in the past. He first gained notoriety for a museum display in 2000 when he placed goldfish in electric blenders filled with water and invited visitors to turn them on.
A fake mourner who repeatedly gatecrashed Wellington, New Zealand funerals was so keen on the food that he brought along tupperware containers to fill up and take home.
The "grim eater" attended up to four funerals a week during March and April before he was stopped.
Harbour City Funeral Home director Danny Langstraat said the company eventually grew concerned enough to take a photograph of the man and distribute it to its branches.
"He was showing up to funeral after funeral, and without a doubt he didn't know the deceased."
The man, thought to be aged in his 40s, went to different churches and venues around the eastern suburbs, including Miramar, Rongotai and Kilbirnie.
"We saw him three or four times in a week. And certainly he had a backpack with some tupperware containers so when people weren't looking, he was stocking up."
The man was "always very quiet and polite, and did as the rest of the mourners did in paying his respects".
He dressed casually, but that was not unusual at funerals, Mr Langstraat said.
"[It was] not like this person might live on the street or this person has sanitary problems."
But he may have had mental health issues as he was not discreet about taking the food.
Funeral directors quickly alerted families to what was going on. Some had no problem with him being there, but one confronted him and asked him to leave.
He stopped coming after one staff member took the man aside, telling him he could still come to funerals but could not take food home with him.
The man was not the only person to gatecrash funerals organised by the company, but he was the hungriest. "I've been here for 17 years and this is the first time that's happened. It's on the far end of the scale."
The food on offer at funerals usually included quiches, sausage rolls, club sandwiches, biscuits, muffins and pikelets – "all finger food easily dealt with".
Funeral Directors Association president Tony Garing said such cases happened in the industry from time to time.
But it was difficult to stop people from coming – or call their behaviour theft – because funerals were usually public events, he said.
"If it's in a church, or even in a funeral home, if a notice has been published in the paper, it's essentially a public event. That makes it a bit hard to keep people out."
The woman had been pronounced dead hours earlier at a hospital in Cali, in western Colombia, after she suffered multiple organ failure due to complications related to multiple sclerosis.
After multiple resuscitation attempts had apparently failed, the doctors pronounced the woman dead and sent her to the funeral home.
But as the workers began to apply formaldehyde to her body, she started breathing again and began making movements.
Doctors identified it as a case of 'Lazarus syndrome', an extremely rare phenomenon in which the circulation spontaneously restarts after failed resuscitation.
The woman was returned to the hospital, where she remains in a coma.
