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Speaker 1: This episode discusses the death of an individual in their

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Speaker 1: subsequent autopsy. If things like this upset you, this is

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Speaker 1: not the episode for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the

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Speaker 1: World with their host Doctor Kendall Crowns. My wife once

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Speaker 1: asked me we're the most common things associated with people's deaths,

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Speaker 1: and my response to her was alcohol, methamphetamine use, and

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Speaker 1: showing off for women. So today we're going to play

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Speaker 1: a little quiz called is it alcohol, meth or women.

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Speaker 1: So this case occurred on a July fourth evening. This

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Speaker 1: scene was a thirty year old male. He was out

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Speaker 1: on a lake with friends. They were firing off fireworks

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Speaker 1: and having a good time. At some point in the evening,

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Speaker 1: this scene decided to pick up a fireworks mortar and

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Speaker 1: launch it off his chest. So let's stop right there.

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Speaker 1: For those of you unfamiliar with fireworks, a fireworks mortar

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Speaker 1: is a consumer firework that uses launch topes, which are

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Speaker 1: commonly called mortars. These are fiberglass, pressed wood, or cardboard

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Speaker 1: or plastic. They are a long tube with a flat

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Speaker 1: base at the bottom. What the mortars are used for

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Speaker 1: is to launch the mortar shells, which can be spherical

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Speaker 1: or cylindrical and they can be almost two inches in length.

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Speaker 1: They have a lift charge that launches the firework into

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Speaker 1: the air and also lights a time delay fuse which

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Speaker 1: after a period of time, lights what is called the break,

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Speaker 1: which is a bursting charge in stars and the stars

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Speaker 1: are the colorful things that fall from the sky. The

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Speaker 1: ones that the deceiton was using were sixty gram mortar shells,

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Speaker 1: which means sixty grams of chemical composition, which includes gunpowder.

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Speaker 1: Just for reference, a shotgun shell has about twenty eight

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Speaker 1: grams of gunpowder. So these aren't fireworks you want to

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Speaker 1: fool around with or do something crazy. So let's get

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Speaker 1: back to the story. So he launches his fireworks off

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Speaker 1: his chest. The fireworks shoots out across the lake and explodes,

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Speaker 1: and everybody's like, oh, that was crazy, And they turn

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Speaker 1: around and the scenees laying on the ground unresponsive. Emergency

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Speaker 1: medical services is called and when they arrived, he did

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Speaker 1: not have a pulse and he was declared dead at

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Speaker 1: the scene. He was brought to the medical Examiner's office

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Speaker 1: and I performed an autopsy on him. He is a

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Speaker 1: well developed all Nurshmail. He looked his age of thirty

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Speaker 1: years old. He had a large abrasion on his chest

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Speaker 1: on the left side, overlying his heart as a surrounding bruise. Internally,

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Speaker 1: underlying this abrasion, there was a fracture of the sternum,

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Speaker 1: which is the mid portion of new chest play and

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Speaker 1: fractures of the left ribs, a laceration of the heart,

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Speaker 1: contusions of the lungs, and bleeding in the sac surrounding

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Speaker 1: the heart, which is called the para cardium. So he

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Speaker 1: had a hemo pear cardium and bleeding in the chess

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Speaker 1: cavity which is achemothorax. He had no other evidence of

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Speaker 1: injury and no other natural disease processes. So his cause

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Speaker 1: of death was blonde force injuries and his manner of

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Speaker 1: death was accident. His toxicology findings will discuss shortly. So

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Speaker 1: I had the cause of death, I had the manner

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Speaker 1: of death, but I didn't understand how did this fireworks

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Speaker 1: mortar cause his death. I wanted to find out what

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Speaker 1: kind of force was involved? So how could I do that?

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Speaker 1: So what I thought was I would approach the local

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Speaker 1: university where I work and go to their physics department.

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Speaker 1: I met with one of the physics professors and He

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Speaker 1: told me that he could help me out and figure

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Speaker 1: out what this recoil force was, and I bought some

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Speaker 1: more fireworks mortars. He and I met at a police

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Speaker 1: training center that had a large open field. When he

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Speaker 1: showed up on that day and got out of his car,

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Speaker 1: he walked over and the equipment he brought with him

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Speaker 1: was a luggage scale, and I said to him what

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Speaker 1: is that. He goes, well, this is a scientific instrument.

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Speaker 1: I go, well, it looks like a luggage scale, and

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Speaker 1: he said, well, it might be a luggage scale, but

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Speaker 1: it'll be able to measure the force. It'll be able

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Speaker 1: to do what we needed to do. This luggage scale

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Speaker 1: looked like a fancy weight scale. It was made out

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Speaker 1: of metal and it had a dial where you could

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Speaker 1: see the amount of weight that was on it. But

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Speaker 1: there was no way of calculating that weight unless we

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Speaker 1: were looking right at it. And there was no way

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Speaker 1: I was going to stand next to it when those

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Speaker 1: fireworks launched. So first thing I said to him was, well,

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Speaker 1: how are we going to document how much force there was?

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Speaker 1: And he said, well, let's just set up a camera

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Speaker 1: right next to it. We had two cameras at the time,

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Speaker 1: so okay, we could set one up, but I was

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Speaker 1: a little concerned about it getting damaged, and how were

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Speaker 1: we going to slow it down enough to be able

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Speaker 1: to see this dial move. We set it up, We

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Speaker 1: launched the first mortarshell, and the explosion happened. The mortarshell

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Speaker 1: shot into the air, and the mortar itself shot off

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Speaker 1: the scale and fell on the ground. When the physicists

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Speaker 1: and I walked over, the scale was severely dented and broken,

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Speaker 1: and he became very angry and said, well, that stupid

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Speaker 1: firework just broke my scale. I can't believe this. And

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Speaker 1: I said to him, I go, well, are we going

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Speaker 1: to even be able to measure anything? He goes, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I'm done. This is ridiculous. He picked up

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Speaker 1: his broken scale and left. We looked at the video

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Speaker 1: from that one firework launch. It was so fast there

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Speaker 1: was no way you can even read the dial even

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Speaker 1: when we slowed it down. So I had to find

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Speaker 1: someone else to help me. I went back to that

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Speaker 1: university and I approached a mechanical engineering professor. He told

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Speaker 1: me that he could help, and that I shouldn't have

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Speaker 1: used a physicist because the physicist wouldn't have been able

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Speaker 1: to figure that out anyway, and engineers were better for

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Speaker 1: the job, so he assigned to work with me a

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Speaker 1: PhD student by the name of Bonnie, and Bonnie and

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Speaker 1: I had a meeting and we discussed how we could

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Speaker 1: measure this recoil force and what she came up with

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Speaker 1: is she could make a force plate which was made

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Speaker 1: from metal, had sensors put in it, and then had

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Speaker 1: the sensors connected to a computer which had very long

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Speaker 1: wires so you didn't have to be next to the

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Speaker 1: firework when it launched. So it was incredibly safe and

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Speaker 1: it was well constructed. So with Bonnie's help and her

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Speaker 1: force plate, I purchased more fireworks, and this time we

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Speaker 1: asked the fire Marshal if we could use an area

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Speaker 1: to fire off the fireworks. He said that we could

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Speaker 1: use a fireman's training station which had a nice large

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Speaker 1: open field, but his one request was that he could

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Speaker 1: watch the fireworks be launched as well and invite whomever

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Speaker 1: he wanted, which I had no problem with. So at

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Speaker 1: noon on a nice sunny day, we went to go

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Speaker 1: launch these fireworks. The fire Marshal and his five friends

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Speaker 1: showed up complaining that we were launching fireworks in the

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Speaker 1: middle of the day, and there wasn't going to be

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Speaker 1: any fancy show, and that was kind of dumb. I

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Speaker 1: explained to him we weren't there for the fireworks. We

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Speaker 1: were there to collect data, which he understood, of course,

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Speaker 1: but he was still disappointed. Bonnie set up her force plate,

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Speaker 1: hooked it up to a computer. We were about ten

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Speaker 1: yards away from the mortar and the force plate, so

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Speaker 1: we were in a nice safety zone. So I began

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Speaker 1: launching the fireworks and Bonnie began collecting the data. We

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Speaker 1: launched off so many fireworks that day. I actually had

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Speaker 1: a blister on my finger from using a lighter over

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Speaker 1: and over and over. And after about three hours of

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Speaker 1: launching fireworks, we had collected the data that we needed.

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Speaker 1: Bonnie processed the data and came up with the following findings.

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Speaker 1: The recoil force of the fireworks mortar was equivalent to

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Speaker 1: being hit in the chest by a baseball thrown at

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Speaker 1: ninety miles per hour, which is a significant amount of force.

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Speaker 1: So I had my answer. When the firework launched, the

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Speaker 1: recoil force went back into the decedent's chest, fracturing his

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Speaker 1: sternamin ribs and pushed the broken bones into his heart,

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Speaker 1: lacerating his heart which caused bleeding. So with that information,

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Speaker 1: I was satisfied with what happened. Case closed. So it's

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Speaker 1: time for everybody to check their answers. And what was

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Speaker 1: your answer? Was it alcohol, meth or was it women? Well,

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Speaker 1: it's a trick answer. It's to the above. It was

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Speaker 1: alcohol and women. His alcohol level was zero point two

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Speaker 1: two percent in the blood, which means he roughly drank

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Speaker 1: about eleven beers within the hour before his death. The

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Speaker 1: other thing is is there was women at the lake too.

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Speaker 1: He was trying to impress them by showing them how

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Speaker 1: hard he was by launching this firework off his chest,

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Speaker 1: and in his attempt to show off to women and

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Speaker 1: being intoxicated, he ended up dead. And closing. Remember always

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Speaker 1: use fireworks appropriately because they aren't very dangerous. And for

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Speaker 1: your men out there listening to the show, most women

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Speaker 1: aren't very impressed by you doing dumb things, so just

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Speaker 1: don't do it. Well. That brings us to the end

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Speaker 1: of the episode. I hope you learned something and I

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Speaker 1: hope you were entertained. Next time,