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Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, North Carolina, when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but instead grabbed a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
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In Grants Pass, Oregon, Michael Kennedy tried to shoot a beer can off Anthony Roberts’s head with a bow and arrow in May as part of what Roberts later said was an initiation rite for Mountain Men Anonymous. Kennedy missed, and the arrow went through Roberts’s right eye, penetrating eight inches of his brain and coming within a millimeter of severing major blood vessels, which would have caused instant death. Roberts never lost consciousness, was later fitted with a glass eye, and suffered no brain damage.
Jeffery Ham was convicted in New Orleans in April of fatally shooting his girlfriend. One police officer testified that Ham said he had shot her after watching a presidential debate on TV because “she chose the wrong side” and because she wanted to watch a sex tape right after the debate, which Ham said would be disrespectful.
