Lookout Below

A British man, who had just cut off his arm in a freak chainsaw accident, calmly knocked on his neighbor’s door and said, "Please help, I’ve just cut my arm off."

John Stirling was cutting down a tree in his yard when his chainsaw slipped and cut off his arm below the elbow.  His neighbor, Steve Francis, placed the arm in a bag of frozen food to keep the limb cold.  "He wasn’t screaming, he was as relaxed as can be," Francis said.  "I didn’t realize anything was wrong until I looked down and saw his arm missing.  He’s a brave man, I’ll give him that. I couldn’t believe he didn’t faint."

Stirling ended up in Queen Victoria Hospital in West Sussex.  He underwent 14 hours of emergency surgery to reattach the arm.

More at Sky News

An aspiring chef in England died after eating red-hot chili sauce in a competition with a friend.

Andrew Lee, 33, challenged his girlfriend’s brother to see who could eat the hottest sauce.  Lee prepared a tomato sauce with red chilies grown on his father’s farm.  Lee ate the sauce and immediately suffered intense discomfort and itching.  He was found dead the next morning and possibly suffered a heart attack. 

The coroner is conducting toxicology tests to see if Lee died from the hot sauce.  Lee was in perfect health and had just passed a medical exam at work.  He was a good cook and often prepared meals for his family.

Lee climbed into be around 2:30 am and was itching all over his body.  His girlfriend scratched his back until he fell asleep.  When she awoke, Lee was dead.

An Iowa teenager is recovering after falling and impaling himself on a set of deer antlers.  Todd Reynolds, 16, was climbing through a window in his grandmother’s home after locking himself out.  He slipped and fell onto the antlers, which impaled him through his back and just missed his spine. 

The antlers were resting upright on the floor when the boy fell on them.  The grandmother had saved the antlers of a deer that she accidentally killed with her car years ago.

Emergency room doctors removed the antlers.  The teen is home now and expected to recover fully.

A Cuban tae kwon do athlete, unhappy with the referee’s call during the Olympics, took matters into his own hands, er, feet. 

Angel Valodia Matos attacked the referee, Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, after Chelbat disqualified Matos for taking too long in an injury timeout.  Matos became upset with the call, pushed another judge, kicked Chelbat, and spat on the mat as security hauled him out of the arena.

After the match, the World Taekwondo Federation banned Matos and his coach, Leodis Gonzalez, for life and erased his records at the Beijing Games.  "This is a strong violation of the spirit of tae kwon do and the Olympic Games," the WTF said in a statement.

Matos was winning his match in the second round against Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan, when Chilmanov landed a good blow on Matos, who then fell to the ground.  More than a minute passed as Matos waited for medical attention, so Chelbat disqualified Matos because tae kwon do rules allow only one minute for an injury timeout.  "To me it was obvious he was unable to continue," said Chilmanov, who went on to win the bronze medal.  "His toe on his left foot was broken."

More at The New York Times

A typo in a cake recipe in a Swedish food magazine poisoned four people and sent them to the hospital.  Publishers recalled all 10,000 copies of their Matmagasinet food magazine, sent a warning letter to its 50,000 subscribers, and placed a leaflet in store copies.

"There was a mistake in a recipe for apple cake. Instead of calling for two pinches of nutmeg it said 20 nutmeg nuts were needed," said Matmagasinet’s Chief Editor Ulla Cocke.  "At first we thought this would be enough, because we didn’t really think anyone would bake or eat this cake, since so much nutmeg would give it a horrible, bitter taste, and because it is simply not that easy to get hold of that much nutmeg," Cocke said.  But when the publishers discovered that people had actually eaten and been poisoned by the cake, they immediately recalled all copies of the magazine issue.

Four adults ate one cake made from this recipe and experienced severe dizziness and headaches, but all are expected to recover.

"We publish 1,200 recipes each year, and of course there have been times when they’ve had a bit too much butter or too little flour, but we have never experienced anything like this before," Cocke told AFP.

Read more at AFP

A Florida man went on a violent rampage after a minor fender-bender, stabbing the occupants of a car, then running over and killing a woman in another vehicle.

Police arrested Casey Weldon Till, 26, and charged him with murder and carjacking.  They had found Till at his home from a prescription pill bottle left at the scene.  Police allege Till murdered Odalis Cespedes, 41, by running her over twice with his car.  Till told police he was high on crack at the time, as if that somehow excuses his crime.

The incident started when Till’s minivan slammed into a stopped car driven by Cespedes’ daughter, 19-year-old Ivon Despaigne, and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Angel Gonzalez.  When the couple went to check the damage, Till slashed Gonzalez’s throat and stabbed Despaigne in the neck. 

Till then got into the couple’s car and repeatedly rammed the vehicle ahead, in which Cespedes was sitting.  Cespedes got out of the car, removed her 6-month-old granddaughter from her car seat, and was trying to escape with the baby in her arms when Till ran her over and killed her.  Fortunately, the baby was unharmed.  Hopefully Till will be locked away for a very long time.

A kite surfer remained in critical condition after being dragged and thrown across Fort Lauderdale Beach by Tropical Storm Fay.  A local news crew caught Kevin Kearney’s accident on video.  “The wind was whipping around, picking him up and dragging him around,” said Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Chief Lois Bowman.  The kite surfer hit the sand, was picked up again by the strong wind and blown out of camera range.  Emergency workers treated him at the scene and then brought him to the hospital, where Kearney is being treated for a serious head injury and lacerations on his arms and legs.

A U.K. businessman is surely to win the "Creative Suicide" contest.  Gerald Mellin, 54, decapitated himself in his sports car to get back at his younger wife for leaving him. 

Mellin tied one end of a rope to a tree, got into his Aston Martin, and wrapped the other end of the rope around his neck.  He then drove the $150,000 sports car into a busy road, giving other drivers a front-seat view of his horrific death as his head popped off and rolled into traffic.

The day before Mellin’s suicide, a court awarded an extra £100 per week in alimony to his estranged wife, Mirielle, 33.  In response, Mr. Mellin sent Mirrielle a text message that said "Congratulations XXX" and asked to meet. 

"We met in a pub after a court hearing and he started having a tantrum," Mrs. Mellin said.  "As we made our way back to our cars he opened the boot and said, ‘There’s my rope, that’s what I’m going to kill myself with.’  I told him to grow up and give me the rope.  But he just laughed."  Nobody’s laughing now.

More at the DailyMail

Pirates armed with machetes hacked a U.S. tourist to death and seriously wounded his wife in an attack aboard the couple’s sailboat in Guatemala.  Nancy Dryden, 67, said her husband, Daniel Perry Dryden, 66, was killed by four men who boarded their boat while it was anchored in Lake Izabal.

"They poked us and stabbed us with the machetes, and they were asking for money, specifically dollars," said Dryden, who in a Guatemalan hospital in stable condition.  The couple complied with the demands, but the robbers were apparently unhappy with their booty. "We had a few quetzales (Guatemala’s currency), but we had no dollars with us on the boat," Dryden said.

Dryden said the four men swam from shore to reach their boat.  After murdering her husband, the men demanded Nancy hand over the boat keys.  When she refused, the men surprisingly left and swam back to shore.  Nancy struggled over to the boat’s radio and sent out a distress call.  "I said we need help … my husband was not moving."

More at FoxNews

A man in Long Island, New York, was charged with driving drunk with his wife on the roof of their car.  Police said Diamond Mircea was fighting with his wife, Monica Mircea, at their home around 12:30 Sunday morning.  They said he got into the car, and his wife climbed onto the car’s roof to try to stop him.  The husband drove about a block when his wife fell to the street and hit her head.  She is now hospitalized in critical condition.

Police booked the husband on vehicular assault and driving while intoxicated.  He’s in jail pending arraignment.