Humor 3/8/99: Bizarre Story & Lesson #2

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend. As many of you from BCEC know, Steve
Lee moved back to LA from Boston. I went with him and his friend Jeff
Wong to the Asian American Men's Conference. It was a great time of
singing and fellowshipping with about 500 attendees. The speakers were
very good: David Gibbons, Cory Ishida, Kevin Doi, Jeff Louie, and Ken
Fong. One of the conference co-directors is Louis Lee, who works with
Promise Keepers. The worship time at the end was especially powerful.
If you're ever looking for a conference speaker, you can try any of
these guys.

This week's thought provoking question is: "If you could have any
person from any time in history call you for advice, and they were to
listen to what you told them, who would you want to hear from?"

The humor email below was forwarded by Dave Shim. The inspirational
story is lesson #2 from an email forwarded by Susan Hasegawa. Enjoy!

-Josh.
_________________________________

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS
president Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal
complications of a bizarre death.

Here is the story:

On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus
and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The
decedent had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to
commit suicide. He left a note to that effect indicating his
despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted
by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him
instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety
net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect
some building workers, and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to
complete his suicide the way he had planned. Ordinarily, Dr. Mills
continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide
and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he
"intended" is still defined as committing suicide. That Mr. Opus was
shot on the way to certain death nine stories below at street level, but
that this suicide attempt probably would not have been successful
because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he
had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated, was
occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously,
and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that
when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets
went through the window striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt,
one is guilty of the murder of subject B.

When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were
both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded.
The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife
with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.
Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident, that is,
the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old
couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal
accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her sons financial
support and
The son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the Shotgun
threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would
shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the
son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the
son was in fact Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over
the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led
him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed
by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had
actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a
suicide.
_________________________________

2 ~ Pick-up in the Rain

One night, at 11:30 PM, an older African-American woman was standing on
the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm.
Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet,
she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help
her - generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took
her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxi cab.
She seemed to be in a big hurry! She wrote down his address, thanked
him and drove away. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's
door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his
home. A special note was attached. It read: "Thank you so much for
assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only
my clothes but my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was
able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed
away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others."

Sincerely,
Mrs. Nat King Cole
--
_____________________________________

Joshua Li
431 S. Burnside Ave. #12 B
Los Angeles CA 90036
(323)936-8476
Permanent Email: joshli@post.harvard.edu
http://personal.anderson.ucla.edu/joshua.li/