Dark Place

Grief counselors will be at Poquoson High School in Virginia Monday to help students deal with the sudden, tragic loss of one of their classmates.

A 15-year old student died in a wood chipper accident Sunday evening.

Poquoson Police Chief Cliff Bowen says the teen was working with Old Dominion Tree and Lawn Care Service at a home on Wagner Road.

"They were doing some tree trimming and using a chipper machine to grind up some of the debris," Bowen said. "Apparently one of the members of the crew was shoveling debris into the back of the chipper, at which time the shovel he was using got caught in the blades and pulled him into the machine."

The boy died at the scene, Bowen said. The teen's identity has not been released.

"Based on everything we know this is an accident," said Chief Bowen. "It's one the most tragic accidents I've seen in my 25 years of law enforcement."

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A teenager was killed in a freak accident after the car she was in was hit by a boat, a jury was told.

Mark Tissiman was towing a trailer with a dinghy aboard behind his Range Rover Sport. But the boat’s mast broke loose just as it passed an oncoming Rover saloon driven by Duncan Smith in Dowles Road, Bewdley. The mast smashed through Mr Smith’s windscreen missing him but fatally injuring his front seat passenger, 19-year-old Sarah James.  She suffered massive head injuries and died in hospital two hours later.

At Hereford Crown Court prosecutor Peter Arnold claimed Tissiman had failed to secure the mast properly after leaving a sailing club at Chelmarsh reservoir 13 miles away with his wife. Tissiman, a 48-year-old heating engineer of Kidderminster Road, Bewdley, denies causing the death of Miss James by dangerous driving. Miss James, of Redstone Drive, Highley, had gone to the cinema in Kidderminster with her friend Mr Smith on the night of June 4 last year. They were going home around 10.45pm along the B4194 out of Bewdley when the defendant’s car approached from the Button Oak direction. In a statement read out in court, student Mr Smith said Miss James was sending a text on her phone when he heard a loud crack.

“My mouth filled with glass,” he said. “I said what the hell was that but Sarah didn’t respond. At first I thought we’d been hit by a brick or a bat.

“I pulled over but Sarah was completely still. She was still holding her phone with her head down. The pole was in the car between us.”

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One person was killed and another injured on Thursday when a bear rehearsing a "bears on ice" show attacked his handlers at a circus in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, circus officials said.

The five-year-old bear, part of a troupe of the prestigious Russian state circus, attacked and killed a director of the visiting circus during rehearsals in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.

"The incident occurred during a rehearsal by the Russian state circus company troupe which was performing in Bishkek with the program, Bears on Ice," Bishkek State Circus Company director Kurmangazy Isanayev told reporters.

The bear, who was wearing ice-skates when the incident occurred, attacked 25-year-old circus director Dmitry Potapov, dragging him across the ice rink by his neck and nearly severing one of his legs before relenting.

It was unclear what caused the bear to attack Mr Potapov, who died at the scene from his injuries under the care of medical personnel, he said.

A 29-year-old circus employee who attempted to rescue Mr Potapov while he was being mauled was also severely injured during the attack, doctor Gulnara Tashibekova told reporters.

"The victim has sustained serious injuries - deep scalp lacerations, bruising of the brain, lacerations on his body. His condition is considered critical," she said.

The bear was later shot and killed by local police, Mr Isanayev said.

The circus, located in the heart of the capital, has been cordoned off by police and emergency service workers and experts have been brought in to examine the animal.

The incident was not the first time a visiting Russian bear was involved in a deadly attack in Kyrgyzstan.

In 2002 a bear on loan from Russia to the Bishkek city zoo attacked and killed a small child who had reached out to pet it.

In that incident, local experts blamed the animal's aggressive behaviour on its severe malnourishment.

Bear attacks on people and livestock are common in the vast, sparsely inhabited regions of the former Soviet Union.

But deadly attacks are surprisingly rare in the popular circuses, which often use trained bears for comedic effect.

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A resident of Chongqing municipality received a whopping 950,000 yuan ($139,162) in compensation after a pet dog fell from a 9th floor of a residential building and landed on her head in June 2007.

The woman surnamed Zhang, a teacher at a local middle school, had to stay in hospital for months undergoing treatment after the freak accident, in which the dog died.

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