2 DEATH of an Olympian by Accidental Shooting - Kevin O'Halloran, AUSTRALIA

(l-r) Jon Henricks, John Devitt, Murray Rose
& Kevin O'Halloran
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In 1956, the Aussies dominated in the pool at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. Some of their swimming competitors went on to become some of Australia's best, including Kevin O'Halloran, seen here in this team who won the men's 200m freestyle...

Kevin O'Halloran (3 March 1937 – 5 July 1976) was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1950s who won a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. The first Western Australian to win Olympic gold, O'Halloran learnt to swim in his home town of Katanning. He moved to Perth to attend secondary schooling at Guildford Grammar School, where he became more committed to swimming.

Katanning was one of the few country towns in Western Australia that had a public swimming pool. Along with his siblings, O'Halloran learned to swim there, often defeating local boys who were four years his senior. At the age of eight, he was taught to swim competitively by his teacher at Katanning State Primary School, who was an age group champion in her youth.

In 1953, O'Halloran placed second in the 110 yd and 440 yd freestyle events at the Western Australian Championships in the open division and won the 110 yd breaststroke and the 110 and 220 yd freestyle in the junior division. In the process, he cut six seconds from the state record in the 440 yd event. He was selected for the Western Australian team for the Australian Championships, but his parents and headmaster decided that his schooling was more important.

O'Halloran made his national debut at the 1955 Australian Championships in Adelaide; he finished fifth in the 110 yd freestyle behind future Olympians Jon Henricks and John Devitt.



[Gold medal winning Australian male 4 x 200 metres freestyle
relay swimming team, Jon Henricks, Murray Rose,
John Devitt and Kevin O'Halloran,
Olympic Games, Melbourne, 3 December 1956]
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Upon the recommendation of his parents, O'Halloran moved to Sydney in late 1955 to train with Frank Guthrie in an attempt to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. O'Halloran boarded with a host family and worked in a wool store to pay his expenses. O'Halloran's initiation into Guthrie's training program was difficult. After seeing O'Halloran's freestyle technique for the first time, Guthrie asked him "Can you swim any other stroke? If you are going to swim for me you'll have to learn all over again." O'Halloran refined his style and increased his workload to around 10 km a day, something that was normal for competitive swimmers in the eastern states, but uncommon in Western Australia.  In one month, he cut 17 s off his personal best time in the 440 yd freestyle, reducing it to 4 min 55 s. At the 1956 New South Wales Championships, he finished third in the 220 yd freestyle behind Gary Chapman and Devitt; his time of 2 min 12.6 s was 10 s faster than the times he had recorded in Western Australia. He came fourth in both the 110 yd and 440 yd; his time in the latter event was more than 30 s faster than his best time in Western Australia, and in the former event he breached the 60 s barrier for the first time. At the Australian Championships, he came third in the 440 yd freestyle in a time of 4 min 37.8 s behind Murray Rose and Murray Garretty. He did this despite suffering from ear trouble, making him the fifth fastest swimmer in the world for the calendar year, which earned him an individual berth in the 400 m event at the Olympics. O'Halloran came fourth in the 220 yd in a time of 2 min 9.2 s to earn a berth on the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay squad. With Rose, Henricks and Chapman regarded as certain selections for the final quartet, O'Halloran was expected to battle for the fourth relay position. At the end of the trials, Guthrie claimed that O'Halloran was "the find of the recently held Australian Championships and the future swimmer for Australia. I am confident that we did not see Kevin's best times this season."




Eventual Death...

In 1958, O'Halloran's parents traveled across the continent to watch him swim at the Australian Championships in Sydney, but a recurring ear infection hindered his performances. He missed selection for the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff and retired after the long car journey back across the Nullarbor. Upon arriving in Kojonup, O'Halloran was reported to have said, "I've had enough". O'Halloran then worked full-time on the family property.

In 1976, his body was discovered next to a rifle, near a fence on the property; he had tripped as he climbed through the fence, and accidentally shot himself. O'Halloran had never married. The 50 m pool at Kojonup was named the Kevin O'Halloran Memorial Pool in his honour, and he was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Hall of Champions.








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0 DEATH By Cassowary Bird, AUSTRALIA

Cassowaries are among the very few birds that can kill a person.  A cassowary can charge up to 30 miles an hour and leap more than 3 feet in the air. On each foot are three claws—one slightly curved like a scimitar, the other two straight as daggers—that are so sharp New Guinea tribesmen slide them over spear points.  People have had ribs broken, legs cracked and flesh gashed.
The last person documented to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean from Queensland, Australia.

After encountering the bird on their family property, and despite the size of the brightly coloured flightless bird before them, McClean and his brother, three years his junior, decided to kill it with clubs. It was a fatal mistake.  Armed with its long-and-sharp-clawed foot, the bird kicks the younger boy, who flees.  When McClean struck the bird it knocked him down.  Laying vulnerable, the bird then kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm long cut in one of his main blood vessels. Though the boy managed to get back on his feet and run away, he collapsed a short while later and died from the hemorrhage.





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0 DEATH Due To Lawnmower Freak Accident, AUSTRALIA

An Australian woman walking to work was killed in a freak accident when she was hit by a flying piece of a steel pipe thrown up by a mower.
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe, 42, a mother of three from Townsville, Queensland, died instantly.

It appeared the slasher had run over a piece of steel pipe hidden in long grass, which was flung in the woman’s direction.

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Detective Sergeant Darren Randall. “She just happened to be in the exact trajectory of the pipe.”

The pipe ricocheted off the grass cutter with such force it travelled a further 50 meters (165 feet) after inflicting the fatal injuries.
The male tractor driver, an unnamed 48 year-old private contractor, is in hospital suffering shock.

The incident occurred across the road from Townsville Central State School, a primary school, but no children witnessed the woman’s death. The school closed for the day.
Local business owner Geoff Eales said his staff had been traumatized by the accident.

“The policewoman said it was the worst thing she had seen in 15 years,” Eales said.
“At the end of the day there is no other explanation than that it was bad luck. It was a one-in-a-million situation. If she had been one second later, or one second earlier, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Vearncombe was born in Papua New Guinea but moved to Australia 14 years ago. She met her fiancé Peter Pyne four years ago while living in Rockhampton.
She had three children from a previous marriage, Wayne, 18, Kevin, 23, and Tara-Lee who lives in Nanango and celebrates her 21st birthday in two weeks.

Vearncombe had been on her way to work at the African Bazaar in Flinders Mall but only made it 100 meters (328 feet) down the street when the accident occurred.
African Bazaar owner Harry Martin said he was devastated to lose Jenny as an employee and a friend.

“It’s such a tragic bolt out of the blue,” he told the Townsville Bulletin. “She was a wonderfully cheerful person and she also proved herself to be very reliable.”



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0 DEATH by Stingray - Steve Irwin, AUSTRALIA

Stephen Robert "Steve" Irwin (22 February 1962 – 4 September 2006), nicknamed "The Crocodile Hunter", was an Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. Irwin achieved worldwide fame from the television series The Crocodile Hunter, an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series which he co-hosted with his wife Terri. Together, the couple also co-owned and operated Australia Zoo, founded by Irwin's parents in Beerwah, about 80 km (50 miles) north of the Queensland state capital city of Brisbane. Irwin died on 4 September 2006 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming an underwater documentary film entitled Ocean's Deadliest.

Steve Irwin

On 4 September 2006, Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray spine while snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef, at Batt Reef, which is located off the coast of Port Douglas in north Queensland. Irwin was in the area filming his own documentary, Ocean's Deadliest, but weather had stalled filming. Irwin decided to take the opportunity to film some shallow water shots for a segment in the television program his daughter Bindi Irwin was hosting when the ray suddenly turned and lashed out at him with the spine on its tail.

The events were caught on camera, and a copy of the footage was handed to the Queensland Police.   In an interview with TIME, marine documentary filmmaker and former spearfisherman Ben Cropp concluded that Irwin had accidentally boxed the ray in, causing it to attack: "It stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest.... It's a defensive thing. It's like being stabbed with a dirty dagger.... It's a one-in-a-million thing. I have swum with many rays, and I have only had one do that to me."

Irwin's colleague, John Staintonstated, "Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here [in the chest], and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone."

It is thought, in the absence of a coroner's report, that a combination of the toxins and the puncture wound from the spine caused Irwin to die of cardiac arrest, with most of the damage being inflicted by tears to arteries or other main blood vessels. A similar incident in Florida a month later, in which a man survived a stingray barb through the heart, suggested that Irwin's removing the barb might have caused or hastened his death.

Crew members aboard his boat called the emergency services in the nearest city of Cairns and administered CPR as they rushed the boat to the nearby Low Islets to meet an emergency rescue helicopter. However, despite the best efforts of Irwin's crew, medical staff pronounced him dead when they arrived a short time later.  According to Dr Ed O'Loughlin, who treated Irwin, "it became clear fairly soon that he had non-survivable injuries. He had a penetrating injury to the left front of his chest. He had lost his pulse and wasn't breathing."




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