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Darwin Awards
2011 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
Vote to tell me what *you* think!

Brick Rustling Gone Wrong

2011 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

In the town of East St Louis, IL with over half the population has left the town due to years of crime leaving many abandon houses.

Thieves have resorted to a new enterprising form of theft, stealing the bricks for resale and have been nicknamed brick rustlers. These thieves have found it easier instead of starting at the top of the building and work their way down, to start at the bottom and work their way across the base until the building falls making it easy to pick up the bricks. Walls are often almost two feet thick and the buildings are two to three stories tall. Some how the thief tries to guess when the building will fall and get out of the way of many tons of brick before they crash on top of them. For obvious reasons this does not always work as planned.

While driving through East St Louis the main road was blocked near some burned out buildings. I saw many police cars and ambulances and asked what happened. A resident told me that the building fell on a man stealing bricks. Later saw on the news that a pair of men had been stealing bricks and scrap metal and the building fell on them. One was trapped but alive, the second went to get help and the trapped man had to give rescuers directions on how to cut him from the rubble. Both survived but are at risk survivors.

Above are links to this incident as well as another website that caught one of these brick rustlers in the act notching out the base of a building showing how dangerous this can be.

http://www.kplr11.com/news/kplr-man-survives-building-collapse-east-st-louis-030911,0,7772455.story

http://www.builtstlouis.net/bricks.html

Submitted on 03/10/2011

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: See links in story below.

Copyright © 2011 DarwinAwards.com

>> Moderator Scores <<

Bruce said:
Maybe Toss: No Self-Selection
While the general story has some possibility I'm a little torn about the provided link. It doesn't offer any proof that the man who was trapped had done the damage that caused the building to collapse. He may have just been scrounging around for whatever he could find and ended up trapped as a result of what other people had done. Let's see what the other moderators have to say...


Candi said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
The idiots who dig out the bricks and get squished are Darwin-worthy. However, I'm with Bruce that this particular guy is iffy. If someone can find a story of an *individual* brick rustler that undeniably got squished by their own actions, then it'd definitely be considered! Thanks anyway, and submit again!


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