Weird news: 3 year old boy picks up gun and shoots

This is getting to be a problem on a regular basis. The proliferation of guns in the United States is pretty high, given that the constitution protects the right of the people to bear guns. As a result, a large number of guns are in private hands. There are mass shootings happening from time to time, where somebody who is over the mental balance takes a gun or rifle and starts shooting people.
Another tricky situation is with regard to gun safety. Most people who have guns ensure that the guns are carefully locked away, so that few people have access to them, especially children. Children do not have that knowledge about the difference between a toy gun and a real gun, and this has proved deadly many times, such as in this case. Here, the boy picked up a gun and pointed it to his older sister and pulled the trigger, shooting the girl in the head. Tragically, the girl died soon after in a bitter impact to the family (link to article):

The pistol lay on the bedroom nightstand loaded and untouched. And then it was in the toddler's hands, pointed toward his older sister. A moment later, Kimberly Reylander was on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her head. The adults rushed into the room. The nine-year-old girl was flown by medical helicopter to Children's of Alabama Saturday, where she died of her injuries, according to AL.com. Irondale, Ala., Police Chief Ken Atkinson told AL.com and WIAT that the children's great-grandfather had left the pistol on his nightstand Saturday morning, not knowing that the kids were coming over. He wasn't home at the time of the shooting, but the kids' grandmother and uncle - whom police detectives are now interviewing - were, though they didn't know there was a gun in the room where the children were playing.

Weird news - Young girl dies in an amusement park in a freak accident

Amusement parks are meant as a place where people come to relax. Some of these rides seem very thrilling, with people dropping fast through large heights, or sitting in an open vehicle that runs on rails and moves at fast speeds. All of these provide great excitement, but need a lot of planning and design to ensure that everything goes right when they are in operation; however, from time to time, you do hear of problems that do occur in amusement parks, a few of which turn fatal. Parks need to have a thorough preventive maintenance program, and even then something can go wrong. But, the only good point is that such accidents are few and you only read about them once in a while. In this case, a girl was sitting in an amusement park ride, and the ride broke sending her dropping down (link to article):

A young boy who was on the ride suffered minor injuries, but walked away from the twisted metal on his own, Barcelona spokeswoman Rosa Diaz said.
The names of the victims have not been announced.
The mechanical arm of "El Pendulo" (The Pendulum) broke and the basket carrying the teens fell on top of the ride known as "The Golden Mine," said Sara Jaurriete, director of the Tibidabo amusement park.
The park's website describes El Pendulo as "the ultimate free fall and the first of its kind in Spain."

Weird news - Student dies in Yale after hair gets stuck in machine

One hears of freak accidents all the time; sometimes these accidents happen in regular everyday places where one would not dream that such accidents happen. Even when such accidents do happen, rare is the case where such an accident could cause a high degree of harm, or cause injury or loss of life. Consider the following case where a female student died in an accident inside a school lab at Yale (link to article):

A Yale University student nearing graduation was killed inside a school lab when her hair was pulled into a piece of machine-shop equipment, an official said today. Michele Dufault, a senior majoring in astronomy, died yesterday night "in what appears to have been a terrible accident involving a piece of equipment," school officials said Wednesday. The school said the accident took place inside a chemistry lab machine shop but didn't say what the equipment was.
On its website, Yale's chemistry department says it maintains a state-of-the-art machine shop to allow students, faculty and staff to construct or modify research instruments. Access is limited to those who have completed a shop course, according to the website.

Such deadly incidents remind us how much sudden tragedies can strike anywhere anytime.

Horrific crime: Cooking a baby in a microwave

A father was sentenced to 25 years in prison for badly hurting his daughter in a microwave; yes you read that right - a father actually put his baby girl in a microwave in a hotel and cooked her for 10-20 seconds, causing so much harm that the infant, now in the custody of a foster mother, has spent a prolonger period under treatment. How more horrific can this get ? The father claimed that he was insane at that time, a defense not bought by the jury (given that he first hit his own daughter, put her in a safe and then a refrigerator, before actually putting her in the microwave):

His daughter Ana's foster mother fought back tears as she detailed how after being injured, the girl's left hand was so burned that there was no skin, no muscle, no fat, only tendon and bone. Ana suffered second- and third-degree burns to her left ear, cheek, hand and shoulder and has required several skin grafts. Part of her left ear had to be amputated.
Prosecutors said Mauldin hurt his daughter because he was angry that he was in a loveless marriage and he didn't want to take care of the infant. They also said Mauldin had a history of violence and of lying about being mentally ill to get out of trouble. Cammack said Mauldin has been wracked by mental illness since he was 10. Mauldin claimed he started hallucinating when he was left alone in the hotel room with his daughter, feeling like mud was running up his body and consuming him.

Maybe what the defendant, Joshua Mauldin said was true. How can any sane person actually put his own daughter into a microwave ? You have to be mentally ill to do something like that.

A house full of garbage

In a tragedy at a house that left investigators stumped, an elderly woman was found in a dehydrated condition in a house buried underneath a pile of debris, garbage and animal feces in a home. An elderly man was found dead. The woman was found after fire-fighters went to the two-story house in Long Island, New York, after relatives said that they could not reach her.
When they reached the house, they found every room piled high with debris mixed with human and animal waste, in some rooms, all the way to the ceiling.
The investigators were not sure how long they were like this, but neighbours had seen them last over a week ago. A strong stench was in the house. The house now sports a sign on the front saying that it was unfit for human occupancy. Read the CNN story.