March 21, 2006

  • Tell y'all what....I'm going to print out my post with the comments for yesterday's "Charles' Update" post, so if anyone else would like to include a congratulatory comment down there, please do!  He'll receive the printed pages when we see him after graduation on Friday.  


    Here's a manner of dying that would never occur to me to even be possible here in North Texas.

    Naturally, it happened in Dallas county.


    Man dies in quagmire after foot chase with deputies

    A man chased
    into an open field on foot by Dallas County Sheriff's deputies sank
    into a quagmire and died after rescue attempts failed.

    The incident happened before dawn in southeastern Dallas County near the town of Combine.

    Sgt. Don Peritz said deputies stopped the man in his vehicle for having
    an outdated registration sticker. He said the man fled into a nearby
    field after deputies learned he had falsely identified himself.

    According to Peritz, deputies searched for about an hour before they
    found the man sunk up to his waist in a quagmire. They tried repeatedly
    over several hours to pull him out, but they were forced to call for
    help after they also began sinking into the cold mud. The man
    eventually died before he could be removed.

    Peritz said
    it is not known why the man died, and an autopsy is planned. He said
    the man, who has not been identified, told his would-be rescuers that
    he had a medical condition.

    Peritz said weather conditions in the field were cold and windy with temperatures in the upper 30s.


    Sounds rather like quicksand, doesn't it?  According to Merriam-Webster, a quagmire is "soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot."   I daresay the quagmire appeared due to the unusually heavy rains the area received over the weekend.

    Poor man!    And come to that, I feel bad for the officers.....obviously had they any idea what would be the result of their attempt to ticket him first for having an expired registration sticker, and then for falsely identifying himself, they'd not have given chase.

Comments (8)

  • On a positive note, I heard on the radio this morning that the plethora of rain that you received last week-end would go a long way to relieving the area's drought.  That's good.

  • Ummmm....with a medical condition and having half of his body encased in a 30-something degree substance for "several hours" -- the cause of death shouldn't be all THAT hard to figure out.

    I suppose it's necessary to pinpoint it precisely in a case like this because of official involvement, but "hypothermia plus a weakened condition" sounds awfully likely to me.

    Poor guy. It sounds like he must have been wanted on a fairly serious charge to react like that -- but prison would have been preferable to the way he wound up.

  • speaking as the wife of an officer....they were right to give chase, regardless of the outcome.  He was breaking the law, false identity is a big sign of nefarious activity.  Cops are not wrong to give chase.  People are wrong to run.  If you run, it's your fault.  *climbing down from soap box now ;) *

    Love you Anne, ~Kathryn

  • True, Kathryn, but you're looking at it from the vantage point of not knowing how it's going to turn out, while I was positing it from the "If they could see the future and determine that chasing him would result in his death" POV.

    You're doubtless correct, however, and the fact he gave a fake name was sufficient reason for the officers to decide here's someone needing to be Taken Downtown.

    Or wherever it is they'd have taken him.

  • We knew a man who had a ditch cave in on him.  His head and shoulders were exposed but because of the force of the earth on his chest, he couldn't expand his chest to breathe.  He died before his chest could be cleared.  That could have been the case with this poor man, if the material was heavy enough and was pressing on his chest.

  • It's so dang hard to save folks from doing dumb stuff!! Drugs, too much alcohol, sex out of marriage, kids climbing trees, digging caves, almost impossible to make life safe. The best we can do is to give 1. orders 2. advice, 3 prayers. And sometimes nothing works. Rats.

  • Did you see the photo in the paper of that chase?  It was amazing.

  • Sad, that's what it is. Sad.

    Okay Anne now on to more fun things. I've sent you one of those invite thingies, so now you don't have to feel left out. Perhaps once I figure it out I'll send out some more invites. But I'm still trying to figure out the point of the whole invite, nudges and whatnot thing!

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