Another DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener

Hobart man dies testing bulletproof vest (Thanks to alert reader Mark DeHaven for the tip!)

Normally, I like my DUMB@$$E$ alive and relatively intact. After all, how can one learn a valuable lesson if one loses one’s life when class is in session? I hate to intrude on what is normally Darwin Award territory. Of course, every rule has it’s exception, and this would definitely be one of them.

There are two things that should only be combined when one is in need of cheap entertainment: shotguns and DUMBA$$E$. To wit, let’s visit the story of the late, (not so) great Daniel Wright:

HOBART, Ind. — A man whose friends initially said he was killed by gunfire outside a Gary liquor store actually died after he donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest and asked a cohort to shoot him.

A friend then shot Daniel Wright with a .20-gauge shotgun, but it turned out the vest Wright had put on Thursday was a flak jacket not designed to stop a bullet.

Wright, 20, was mortally wounded in the shooting and died later at a Gary hospital after two of his friends drove him there….

Hobart police Lt. Leo Finnerty said Friday that Wright was going to join the military and wanted some battlefield experience.

He went to a field in Hobart with his friends, donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest, and then told them: “Shoot me. I’m ready.”

“He voluntarily put on the vest because he wanted to experience what a .20-gauge shotgun would do,” Finnerty told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville.

The Lake County coroner’s office said the plastic cartridge fired from the shotgun’s blast pierced Wright’s chest and some shotgun pellets ripped into his heart.

Robert Lee Stottlemire, 20, of Hobart was charged with reckless homicide for allegedly shooting Wright in the chest from a distance of between 3 to 6 feet.

Two other Hobart men, Brock Bieker, 19, and Michael J. Searle, 18, are charged with assisting Stottlemire by concealing the homicide.

Well, it would certainly appear that there will be one less DUMB@$$ wading in the shallow end of the gene pool. A true DUMB@$$ rarely goes it alone, however, and this is seldom more true than it was in the case of the late, intrepid Mr. Wright. Of course, it WAS his idea, but what would possess someone to ask a friend to point a .20-gauge shotgun at his chest and pull the trigger. And what kind of “friend” would agree to do this? One can only assume that there was much alcohol involved, and/or a complete absence of native intellignence. Truly, this was a team effort.

Anytime a not-particularly-well-laid plan goes awry, the fun really begins. In this case, Mr. Wright’s “friends”, after realizing the dilemma that they faced, did a distressingly poor job of coming up with a story to throw the police off. They did, however, show a surprising degree of destructive creativity.

Hobart police said that after Wright was mortally shot, Searle reloaded the shotgun and fired a round into the windshield of the car they were driving to make their story of the shooting outside the liquor store more believable.

But Gary Police Detective Thomas Decanter said the story started to fall apart as soon as he began questioning the pair at a Gary hospital.

Yep, these maroons truly put the “criminal” into “criminal stupidity”.