[barend]

Star Wars fans burnt by petrol-filled 'light sabre'

24/05/2005 By Stewart Payne


A man of 20 and a girl aged 17 were engulfed in flames when a home-made Star Wars "light sabre" exploded and showered them with burning petrol.

Mark Webb and Shelley Mandiville are thought to have filled a fluorescent tube with fuel to imitate the weapons in the latest Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith, released at the weekend. But their clothing caught fire and Mr Webb suffered 40 per cent burns.

Firemen were called to woodland near Hemel Hempstead, Herts, on Sunday and found them on the ground. Police think they had been filming themselves.

Last night they were in a critical condition at a specialist burns unit at Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, Essex.

telegraph

uh... yeah....
petrol in a fluorescent tube? there's a new low in pyrotechnical awarness...

bloody gushers....

well at least they've taken the heat off the 'starwars kid'





EDIT: (or maybe they've been reading the ASK BAREND column)

This post has been edited by barend: 23 May 2005 - 08:43 PM

[floppydisk]

Hah! The lawsuits will take away all the money GL has made from those bad movies. And petrol in a container like that will definitely explode.

[Mnesymone]

Well I stand corrected... it seems there is no shortage of dumbasses out there - it'd be interesting to see the film.

[Chyld]

Taking a slight tangent - from Hemel, to Essex? Hemel's a big enough town (its not a million miles away from me), surely they've got a good burns unit there? Rather than carting them all the way to Essex? Where is Essex, anyway?

...oh yeah, very silly people.

[J m HofMarN]

Ermmm the way to make your own Jedi lightsaber that is not, dumbasses.

[floppydisk]

I have a lightsaber. It's blue. I used to have a Maul one, which kicked ass, but I don't know where it went.

[Chyld]

In fact, its a mark of how near it was to me, that it ended up on the local news...

[barend]

Taking a slight tangent - from Hemel, to Essex? Hemel's a big enough town (its not a million miles away from me), surely they've got a good burns unit there? Rather than carting them all the way to Essex? Where is Essex, anyway?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I dare say the paramedics were too busy laughing to realize they had passed it...

[J m HofMarN]

There really aught to be a low priority ward in hospitals for people who slay themseves doing stuff like that.

[Mnesymone]

I agree - "and here nurse, is ward Omega. For all the ... stupid cases. This mans arm had be amputated after he cut off all circulation to it trying to prise a free drink from a vending machine. This very silly young man... well you know the thing where you lick the ice... well he did that, only not with his tongue."

Omega Ward should become a real place!

[barend]

or,

"this woman is dying... i can't explain it... the birthing went fine, and there's nothing wrong with her... what the hell? It's as if she were just loosing the will to live?"

"dammit doctor... isn't there anything we can do?!?"

"i suppose we could pump the bitch full of adrenalin... that usually works... ...NEXT PATIENT!!!"

[floppydisk]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

*earthquake*

[J m HofMarN]

Hey that sounds like a great parody of ER.

"What do we have nurse?"

"He was trying to perform a stunt he saw on tv!"

"Right! Send him to the Jackass and Tom Green ward. I'll get to him after I've treated Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera for injuries they sustained while performing the same stunt."

"But doctor, this patient arrived first in the que."

"That's true, but celebrity jackasses take priority. Go get me fifty gallons of glue solvent and a plastic tube, this is gunna get ugly..."

[Mnesymone]

*Shudder*

The entertainment-related injuries. Kind of like nintendonitis but different.

[barend]

proposed hospital wards:

serious burns ward.
stupid burns ward.
Keneval Green Jackass ward.
boys who tried to fly ward.
"i climbed in through the window naked and fell on..." proctology ward.
cell phone/SUV ward (AKA the dumpster out back)