First Place - The 2003 Darwin Award Winner:

When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended
victim during a holdup in Long Beach, California, would be robber James Elliot
did something that can only inspire wonder: He peered down the barrel and
tried the trigger again. This time it worked.....

Honorable Mentions:

The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat
cutting machine and, after a little hopping around, submitted a claim to his
insurance company. The company, suspecting negligence, sent out one of
its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine out and lost a
finger.
The chef's claim was approved.

A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car
during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman
had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus
driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting
from Harare to Beltway had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence,
the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a
free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling
the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre
fantasies.
The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

An American teenager was in the hospital yesterday recovering
from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he
received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to
see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, puts a $20 bill on the
counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer,
the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the
clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled,
leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the
drawer? $15. (If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, was a
crime committed?)

A thief burst into a Florida bank one day wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun. Aiming his gun at the guard, the thief yelled, "FREEZE,
MOTHER-STICKERS, THIS IS A ****-UP!" For a moment, everyone was silent.
Then the snickers started. The guard completely lost it and doubled over
laughing. It probably saved his life, because he'd been about to draw
his gun. He couldn't have drawn and fired before the thief got him. The
thief ran away and is still at large. In memory of the event, the banker later
put a plaque on the wall engraved with the words, "Freeze, mother-stickers,
this is a ****-up!"

Seems this Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He
decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab
some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his
head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on
the head, knocking him unconscious. Seems the liquor store window was made
of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man
grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the
woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within
minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car
and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the Car and
told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer,
that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into
a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, and
demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the
cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the
clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked
away.

Kentucky: Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by
running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck.
Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled
the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove
home..........the chain still attached to the machine, their bumper
still attached to the chain, and (yes, you got it) the license plate still
attached to the bumper. They were quickly arrested.

And the final bonus to reassure us that Darwin's theory of evolution
continues to weed out the mentally challenged:

When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked
on a Seattle street, police arrived at the scene to find a very Sick man
curled up on the ground next to the motor home. The man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but plugging his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank
by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying
that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

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