STRANGE DEATHS UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

Lake County Sheriff’s officers were called to a home in central Florida’s DeLand after a man reported having been attacked by his grandfather. Kolby Parker, 30, told deputies that he and his grandfather, Ronald Wells, Sr., had been smoking marijuana when a confrontation occurred. Parker claims he acted in selfdefence when the older man attacked him with a knife, telling the officers that he managed to take possession of the weapon and himself use it on Mr Wells, who was found dead on the front porch with multiple stab wounds.

While being questioned by police, Parker allegedly pulled two human ears – later established to be those of his grandfather – from a trouser pocket. Deputies described how Parker had become violent towards them, but was eventually subdued before being taken into custody. Despite his claims of self-defence, he admitted to having hit his grandfather multiple times in the head with a baseball bat and stabbing him repeatedly with a butcher’s knife. He also confessed to cutting his grandfather’s ears off, stating that he wanted his grandfather to be with his dead grandmother. miami.cbslocal.com, 17 Mar 2021.

A tourist died and a child was seriously injured after a huge lump of ice fell from the frozen Vilyuchinsky waterfall on the volcanic peninsula of Kamchatka in the Russian Far East on 7 January. The falling ice stranded seven visitors and one guide. Two adults in the group sustained light injuries and were taken to hospital. D.Telegraph, 8 Jan 2021.

Susan Woods, 45, was walking home in Maghull, Merseyside, on 15 August 2020 with a bag containing a bottle of wine and some cider, which she had bought in an off-licence. At 8.50pm she fell heavily near her home in Moorland Road. The wine bottle broke, a shard of glass slashed her neck and she died of blood loss. Ormskirk Advertiser, 10 Sept 2020.

A former police chief who retired to a quiet Suffolk village died in a fireball after setting his car alight beside the village green. Edwin Williams, who was in his 70s and a former Metropolitan Police detective superintendent, had

been involved in a series of disputes with neighbours and other villagers in Cavendish, near Sudbury. He had repeatedly complained about the noise of 14th century St Mary the Virgin’s church bells. At 7.30am one Saturday morning, villagers heard a huge explosion and looked out to see Mr Williams’s grey Hyundai IX35 estate car on fire, with flames shooting up to 30ft (9m) in the air. The blaze sent a pall of black smoke rising above the village. “He was always falling out with people and was not a very popular man,” said one villager. “He had various legal disputes with different neighbours over the years. He would complain about things like problems with drains and guttering. But his biggest issue was with the church bells. Most people in the village love the sound of the bells, but he would repeatedly moan about them.”

Mr Williams wrote an open letter in October 2017, saying he had been “reduced to a frazzle” by the noise of the bells ringing for three hours to commemorate a local soldier who died in World War I. “Living near the church, I do not expect freedom from bells ringing,” he wrote. “However, when a three-hour session blights my comfort and amenity, I intend to complain loudly and in the strongest possible terms... In my opinion, this is just an excuse for additional bell ringing practice and amounts to selfish and inconsiderate conduct.” The unnamed neighbour recalled Mr Williams had tried to start a petition against the bells “and would go and hammer on the doors of the church warden and the vicar to complain about them.” D.Mirror, 7 Mar 2021.

The body of Silas Octavis Strimple, 18, was found on the conveyor belt of a Texas recycling centre. The teenager’s home address is in Washington state, some 2,000 miles away from the Austin recycling plant. Travis County Sheriff’s Office said there were no signs of foul play on the body, but “due to the nature of where the body was discovered, the death is considered suspicious.” Strimple is the third person to have been found dead at a recycling facility in the Austin vicinity during the last year. A 62-year-old man was found dead in December 2020, and the body of a 31-year-old man was discovered last March. kiro7.com, 26 Mar 2021.