Farm Accident Digest

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February 22nd, 2005

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I have found my mentor.
[A man] called 911 early Monday and said he was having a heart attack, but when police and an ambulance arrived, he was outside the house with the chain saw running,
[...]
About 10 state and local officers formed a semicircle around Henkle and ordered him to drop the chain saw, but he revved the saw and refused to put it down, Hill said.

Police said they used pepper spray, then fired when [he] lunged at [an officer].
Forget drinking myself to death in a shack in Montana; I'm going out like this.




Why did he have to die for this? Is there some crime in running a chain saw? They could have backed off and waited until it ran out of gas, or if it was electric, they could have cut power to the house. This lethal force crap really bugs me.

Posted By Donnah on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 10:15am

Pipe down, chickie. There will be no logic allowed here. (even a firehose would've worked, in February in Pennsylvania.)

Suicide by cop totally sucks, but it looks like they were more than happy to oblige. 13 shots? Really?

Posted By Tanya on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 10:54am

Me: Suppressing the use of logic by women since 2001.

Posted By fad on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 10:59am

I think I'm gonna side with the cops on this one. The one cop was hit with the chain saw. I don't think he should have waited for it to run out of gas as he might have been short a few limbs by that time. I would guess those 13 shots were fired in a time span of about 2 seconds, but I could be wrong.

Posted By JohnO on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 11:19am

I think her point was that had they not gone up to him and formed that semi-circle close to him, he couldn't hurt anyone but himself. But the article also doesn't give us all the details to determine if he could have been a threat to anyone else (how close to neighbors or whatever he was).

Posted By fad on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 11:42am

13 shots? Really?

Sounds about right. Haven't you seen any horror movies? Crazy guys with chainsaws are notoriously hard to kill.

I wouldn't be surprised if he wakes up at the morgue and goes on a second rampage.

Posted By Brendan on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 11:52am

I'm generally pro-cop, but chainsaws aren't projectiles. Turn a firehose on him, like you would any nutball with a sah-ward, and it would just shut off. And he couldn't restart it before being tackled.

The article doesn't say if he was wearing a hockey mask, tho. Then I would totally have shot him.

Posted By Tanya on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 12:39pm

I'm surprised the cops didn't end up shooting each other in a crossfire.

Posted By charles austin on Feb 22nd, 2005 at 2:30pm

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