Pending Review
Buried Bottle Bandit
Fuelled by wild rumours of valuable Victorian-era bottles led residents of Murton, Northern Ireland to a new housing estate under construction. The site, which had been a dump in a past century, was bound to hold historic glassware.
Brian Spink sought to see in the New Year with a late-night expedition to the bottle mine. Braving pitch darkness and the bitter cold, he snuck onto the building site. Helpful signs pinpointed the way: "Deep Excavations" they jubilantly proclaimed. Bingo! That must be where the good stuff was freshly available.
On his hands and knees he chose the base of a tasty-looking embankment and begun tunnelling into it. He did not get far. The freshly-dug soil could not hold itself in thin air forever, and several feet (and several bottles) into his own excavation a half-tonne of soil cam down on him.
His body was found the following morning, waist and legs sticking out from under the pile like a cartoon. The entire scene was so dangerous that firefighters were called in to carefully dig him out.
If only he'd started digging from the top.
Submitted on 03/04/2021
Submitted by:
Iona Macdonald
Reference:
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/7153816.treasure-hunt-tragedy-digger-dies/