suicide

[steve-k]

<font color='#000080'>SCUBA DIVER WITH A KNIFE IN HIS CHEST: HOMICIDE OR SUICIDE?

Petri NM, Definis-Gojanovic M, Andric D.

Nadan M. Petri, Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Department, Naval Medical
Institute, P.P. 196 (HRM), 21000 Split, Croatia

A scuba diver was found dead at the bottom of an undersea cave at 54.1 m
water depth, with a knife protruding from his chest. Autopsy confirmed
death due to both drowning and a penetrating knife wound. The incident was
first considered a homicide and two suspects were arrested. Careful
forensic analysis of the profile of the diver's last dive stored in the
dive computer, dimensions of the undersea cave, as well as other forensic
findings, showed that the case was a suicide, which the diver most probably
committed while running out of air, in an attempt to avoid the agony of
drowning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on a
suicide during diving.

[Adrian Kelland]

I remember reading about the arrest of the buddies. Interesting result.

I was recently at a presentation given by police divers. All too often a diver dying in the water is seen as an accident. If the same person was to die unexpectedly, it would be investigated as at least a suspicious death (I am paraphrasing here).

They said that turning off a victims cylinder after any incident should be considered as tampering with evidence.

Adrian

[Driftwood]

<font color='#0000FF'>I remember that one too.... I thought it turned out to be murder as the body was thought to have been moved into the cave after death???

Also, didn't a police diver die trying to recover the body?

[John Gulliver]

I haven't heard of this case before but it reminds me of a similar case here in Sweden some years ago. A diver's body was recovered from the flooded Sala silver mine with a knife in his chest. His budy was charged with murder but the charge was eventually dropped owing to lack of evidence. Everything pointed to an out-of-air drama but nothing could be proved.

[Kev Martin]

So how do I get the wife to go diving?

These stories brought back the memory of a case I read about in 1985/6 about a seventeen year old who was drowned whilst solo diving in caves in northern Florida. &nbsp;It seems that when he realised that he had made an error from which he was not going to recover he scratched a message to his family on his cylinder. &nbsp;Horrendous and truly sad.

Really, really dive safely all.

Kev

[Laurence]

<font color='#0000FF'>great way to get your partners life insurance and get away with it

&quot;honey, you fancy learning to dive&quot;

Lol

[daz]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Laurence @ June 30 2003,11:26)]great way to get your partners life insurance and get away with it

&quot;honey, you fancy learning to dive&quot;

Lol

<font color='#000080'>Can't see it working for me though &nbsp;

Me : &nbsp;Fancy going for a dive,
Her: &nbsp;Why not... &nbsp;ummm why are you swapping your trauma shears for a 6 inch machete ?

[Paul Beal]

Don`t know if anyone has seen the plaque on the stern gun of the Koln (Scapa Flow). There are rumours that the lass who died may have been murdered. Apparently the buddy (the deceased's husband) had just taken out a large life insurance premium on her, he went AWOL straight after the incident.

This is obviously speculation and I am only reporting what one of the many skippers in Scapa told me while we were up there!!

Paul

[Big Steph]

I had an interesting conversation with a trainee about 20 years ago. &nbsp;He asked this question. &quot; If I stabbed my dive buddy to death while underwater, would I be charged with murder?&quot; &nbsp;I replied that he will most certainly face a prison sentence. &nbsp;He then said &quot; what if I said that we were in deep water and I thought that he was a sea monster trying to eat me!&quot; His defence would be that he was narked out of his box and did not know what he was doing. &nbsp;I told him that he would probably spend the rest of his life in the funny farm. &nbsp;Thank f%*k he gave up diving shortly afterwards.