#8 - Natalie Corona
On January the 10th of 2019, 22 year old Californian police officer Natalie Corona was
responding to a three-car crash in Davis. It was, as police chief Darren Pytel would later call it:
“a routine traffic collision”. That is until a man on a bike,
who had nothing to do with the car crash rode up and started shooting. He hit Corona, who
had only been on the job for a few weeks, once, causing her to fall to the ground. After she did,
the man unloaded an entire magazine on her before reloading and starting to fire at bystanders.
He hit an attending firefighter in the boot, hit a backpack, narrowly missing another bystander and
then took off again. According to his roommate, whom he ran into on his way inside the house,
the shooter was acting completely normal. Luckily for the police, the shooter
had left behind his backpack at the scene and they quickly had the suspect identified
and surrounded. The killer was 48-year-old Kevin Limbaugh. After a short, but intense stand-off
during which Limbaugh exited and re-entered his house a few times, Limbaugh eventually shot
himself. He had left behind a note that read: The Davis Police department has been hitting me with
ultrasonic waves meant to keep dogs from barking. I notified the press, internal affairs,
and even the FBI about it. I am highly sensitive to its effect on my inner ear. I did my best to
appease them, but they have continued for years and I can’t live this way anymore.”
#7 - Ashley Guindon
28-year-old Ashley Guindon, a Marine Corps reservist, was fatally shot during her first
day as a member of the Prince William County Police Department, in Virginia. After being
sworn in as a police officer, on February the 26th of 2016, Guindon’s first shift
was scheduled for the following day. At around 5:30 pm during her inaugural day on the job,
Guindon and two other officers responded to reports of a domestic dispute
in the town of Woodbridge. When they arrived at the scene, Army staff sergeant Ronald Hamilton,
aged 32, refused to let them come inside the residence. The officers insisted on performing
a welfare check on Hamilton’s wife, Crystal, who had been the one to place the 9-1-1 call
in the first place. Officer David McKeown attempted to force his way into the home,
at which point Hamilton grabbed an assault rifle and began firing indiscriminately at the officers,
hitting all three of them in the process. One of the wounded policemen managed to successfully call
for backup, but law enforcement personnel were unable to apprehend Hamilton before he shot and
killed his wife. Officer Guindon ultimately passed away from her gunshot wounds as well.
The injuries suffered by the two additional officers at the scene were not life-threatening.
Hamilton was arrested and charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder. After being spared
the death sentence, he was formally sentenced to 7 consecutive life terms in March of 2019.
#6 - Jesus Olvera-Aguilar A 19-year-old roofer was fatally
struck by lightning in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, on September the 7th of 2021.
Jesus Olvera-Aguilar and his brother were working atop The Walk Apartments when the incident
occurred. The victim’s brother heard a loud bang accompanied by a sudden flash of light when the
lightning bolt hit the roof at around 2:50 pm. He turned to find that his brother was unconscious
and had stopped breathing. Neighbors performed CPR on Olvera-Aguilar while they awaited the
arrival of paramedics. First responders ultimately pronounced the teenage roofer dead at the scene.
The fatal accident prompted an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It was reported that the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office was treating Olvera-Aguilar’s death as an
accident and that all evidence confirmed it to have occurred due to the lightning that struck
the roof that afternoon. According to officials in the industry, roofers make up at least 15% of all
lightning-related deaths in Florida each year. #5 - Sean DeMuynck
On July the 4th of 2021, a volunteer for the Penn Wynne-Overbrook Hills Fire Company
was tragically killed in the line of duty. It was meant to be the last day on the job
for 35-year-old Sean DeMuynck. He and his wife, Melissa Richard-Greenblatt, had planned to move
back to the firefighter’s home country of Canada the following week. DeMuynck was packing for their
upcoming move when he was summoned into work due to a reported fire in Wynnewood, at around 10:30
pm. Roughly 30 minutes later, a mayday call went out to the rest of DeMuynck’s department.
The volunteer fireman was found unconscious on the third floor of the burning building to
which he had responded. He was taken to Lankenau Hospital, but ultimately died from the injuries
he’d sustained in the blaze. Firefighters from all across the region attended DeMuynck’s memorial
service, on July the 10th, in the course of which the fallen firefighter was laid to rest
in Lower Merion Township. #4 - Ashley Dias
A crossing guard at Stanley Middle School in Lafayette, California, died after stepping in
front of a moving vehicle to save a young girl walking across the street. Ashley Dias, aged 45,
was a San Francisco resident who, as a child, attended the school for which he was now employed.
He was on the job in the after-school hours of September the 8th of 2021 and noticed an SUV
traveling rapidly toward the crosswalk near the school’s premises. The driver failed to slow down,
despite the fact that there was a student using the crosswalk at the time. As a frontal collision
with the little girl became imminent, the crossing guard pushed her out of the way
and placed himself in the path of the oncoming car. He thus took the full force of the impact.
An unresponsive Dias was pulled out from underneath the SUV and CPR was administered
by witnesses. Lafayette police soon arrived at the scene and the victim was transported to
John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where he would later pass away. A small makeshift memorial
was created by students and faculty members near the crosswalk where the accident had occurred,
honoring Dias and the sacrifice he’d made. #3 - Jordan Romero and Carlos Gutierrez
A pair of construction workers were killed in Boston, Massachusetts, on February the 24th of
2021, after being hit by a dump truck. 27-year-old Jordan Romero and Carlos Gutierrez, aged 33,
were working on a construction site in Boston’s Financial District when the fatal incident took
place. As the dump truck struck the two men it caused them to fall directly into a 9-foot-deep
hole in the ground. They were subsequently trapped in the hole until a witness contacted
9-1-1 and emergency crews were dispatched to the site. A crane was brought in to lift up the truck,
which had gotten stuck at the opening of the hole. The technical rescue crew feared that
simply backing the truck up might cause the above structure to cave in on the two victims.
Once the men were successfully extricated from the trench, they were both pronounced dead by first
responders at the scene. Romero’s family described him as a hard-working man who was trying to save
up enough money to bring his family to the United States from El Salvador. He and Gutierrez worked
for Atlantic Coast Utilities, a Wayland-based contractor that had a long history of ignoring the
safety and health of its employees, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Atlantic Coast faced fines of $1.3 million based on an estimated total of 28 safety
violations in connection with the incident. Today's topic was requested by Captain Mi5
and magicpyroninja. If you have any other topics you'd like to learn about, subscribe & let us know
in the comments section below. #2 - Rolf Lanzendorfer
A sightseeing plane crashed near the Misty Fjords National Monument in Ketchikan, Alaska,
on August the 5th of 2021, killing the pilot and all 5 passengers. The aircraft was being
piloted by 64-year-old Rolf Lanzendorfer of Cle Elum, Washington. The passengers on board were
all vacationing on a Holland America Line cruise ship called the MS Nieuw Amsterdam. Ketchikan is a
popular port for cruise ships, and the sightseeing plane ride was just part of their excursion while
visiting Alaska. The flight through the Misty Fjords gives tourists a view of the glacier
valleys and snow-capped mountain peaks in the area. Lanzendorfer crashed the plane at around
11:20 that morning, at which point the aircraft’s emergency beacon was automatically activated.
Search helicopters spotted the wrecked plane around 2:40 pm, but the bodies of the victims
couldn’t be recovered immediately due to inclement weather and limited visibility.
According to an investigation conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board,
the pilot had crashed into a tree while the plane was traveling through an area with low-hanging
clouds. Lanzendorfer had been involved in another plane crash less than a month prior to his deadly
accident. On July the 9th, an aircraft he was piloting flipped and landed upside down in the
water after hitting a buoy shortly after takeoff. He was the only one on board the plane, and he’d
suffered no injuries in that particular incident. #1 - Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster
At roughly 3:30 pm, on April the 5th of 2010, a coal dust explosion at the Upper
Big Branch South Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia, resulted in the deaths of 29 miners
working at the site. There were dangerously high levels of methane gas present within the mines,
an aspect that greatly contributed to the eruption of the deadly blast. The mine was being operated
by a subsidiary of Massey Energy, a coal extractor that worked primarily in the Appalachian region
of the United States. Massey would later be found guilty of ignoring crucial safety standards that
had allowed for the development of the dangerous conditions that ultimately led to the disaster.
The ventilation systems being utilized in the Upper Big Branch mine hadn’t undergone proper
maintenance work in the days and weeks leading up to the incident, which in turn precipitated the
high levels of methane that caused the explosion. Emergency response teams from multiple surrounding
counties were dispatched to the mines in an attempt to find and rescue any of the miners
who might’ve survived the initial blast. The search was repeatedly delayed due to dangerously
high levels of methane and carbon monoxide in the mine. It was determined that at least 25 of the
workers were deceased as the rescue mission went underway, while 4 individuals remained missing.
Within a few days, the four bodies previously unaccounted for were found, officially bringing
the death toll to 29 people. There had been a total of 31 miners on-site at the time of the
explosion. The two survivors were evacuated early on in the rescue efforts. Massey Energy was fined
$10.8 million based on a total of 369 safety citations. Former Massey CEO Don Blankenship
was convicted of conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and was imprisoned for one year.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather get paid minimum wage to literally watch paint
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