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LONDON (Reuters) - A hearse overturned when the horses pulling it to a south London cemetery stampeded, dragging the carriage and coffin past appalled relatives and sending floral tributes flying.
"It was dreadful," a mourner told the South London Press. "The horses dragged the carriage to the cemetery on its side, tossing the coffin all over the place and destroying all the flowers inside.
"Some people got very angry and had to be restrained by other mourners... It is understandable given the circumstances. I'm horrified that something like this could happen."
Police were called to calm angry mourners so that the funeral last month could go ahead.
The carriage appeared to have clipped a mini-roundabout as it entered Lambeth Cemetery for the funeral, the local council which administers the graveyard said Friday.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A hearse has overturned on a German motorway, shattering the coffin and ejecting the corpse onto the tarmac along with a bag of coffin nails that brought traffic to a standstill.
"The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and yanked the steering wheel round when he woke up," said Jens O'Brien, spokesman for the regional government in Duesseldorf, western Germany said on Wednesday.
"There were nails strewn over 50 metres and the corpse fell out onto the ground." The A40 motorway was closed for an hour and there was a six kilometre tailback as police collected the coffin nails and took the corpse away.
The hearse had not been driving to a funeral but had been transporting the body from Wuerzburg in southern Germany. The undertaker was slightly hurt.
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A 1966 Cadillac hearse sits outside the Kuca family home along Northeast Glisan Street. The bodies of a man, a woman and a 5-year-old girl were found inside the home early Friday. At the back of the car is duct work that ran from the car's exhaust into the home.Portland police discovered the bodies of a Portland couple and their 5-year-old daughter in their Northeast Portland home late Thursday, the result of an apparent murder-suicide.
The three were identified by Portland police as John Kuca, 39; Luray Kuca, 39; and their daughter, Ruby, 5.
Detectives have confirmed that a suicide note was left at the scene.
John and Luray Kuca were members of a band called Vertigo Butterfly, which had released an album earlier this year. Web links provide a window into a world lush with creativity, artistic friends, a vintage clothing business and other bands John Kuca played in.
Emergency dispatchers received a call about 11:20 p.m. Thursday from a relative of the couple who asked police to check on the couple's welfare. The caller said the couple had e-mailed their plans to kill themselves and their child, Sgt. Brian Schmautz said.
The house is in the 10900 block of Northeast Glisan Street.
Todd Richards of Los Angeles said he received an e-mail about 10:45 p.m. Thursday from John Kuca. The e-mail included two attachments, one of which was a "will of sorts," and the other was a list of names who should receive it. Richards said it was not a suicide note, but he sensed the family was in peril.
"They did not come out in black and white terms," he said. "They explained they felt a togetherness in life . . ."
He said he called authorities immediately after reading the e-mail.
He said Luray Kuca's health was a major setback for the family, but he was surprised by their suicide.
"The most surprising part is that Ruby was involved," he said.
Schmautz said officers arrived to find a 1966 Cadillac hearse in the driveway with a hose linking the car's exhaust to a sealed-off bedroom of the two-story home. Inside, police found a man, a woman and a girl in the bedroom. The woman had a faint heartbeat and was taken to an area hospital but later died, Schmautz said.
A piece of conduit sits on the ground next to a 1966 Cadillac hearse. The line had been attached to the car, carrying exhaust fumes into the house.He said the house was so poisoned with toxic fumes that one officer was overcome and was taken to an area hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning. The officer was later released.
By this morning, police had left the scene. The home, an older-style brown bungalow, is surrounded by apartment buildings. The interior appeared tidy. A child's artwork hangs in the living and dining rooms. A Jeep Wrangler with a child seat was in the driveway. The hearse is tucked up against the house with the hose from the exhaust to the house.
A neighbor, Jenny Mattson, said the killings are "a total shocker." The family had lived in the home for six years. She had last seen the girl playing on the porch. Mattson said she first thought the police presence might be because of a burglary.
A close friend of the couple, Guenevere McMahon of New Mexico, said Luray had breast cancer. She said Luray, who did not have health insurance, was misdiagnosed about a year ago and recently developed a virus in her lung that was related to the cancer. She went to a doctor Thursday and learned she had stage 4 breast cancer, the friend said.
At 2:35 p.m. Thursday, John Kuca e-mailed McMahon with the news.
"My love has cancer in many places throughout her body and she is going to die," he wrote, according to McMahon who read the e-mail to an Oregonian reporter this morning. "She is stage 4 and there is no treatment available that can save her. They are trying to talk her into trying to beat it back but even at best they say she likely only has a number of months, yet Luray is opting for no treatment at this time.
"I do not know how to digest this information. I love Luray so much and can't imagine a life without her. If you wish to visit with her once more, I suggest it be sooner rather than later.
"I am truly in shock now and not able to feel anything. I am numb."
McMahon said the family supported themselves with their music and an eBay store where they sold vintage clothing. The family did not have health insurance, she said.
She said Ruby was about to enter kindergarten.
She said the couple moved to Portland in late 2004 or early 2005 and had lived in New Mexico before that. She said John Kuca had two children from previous relationships.
The hearse was sold on eBay, click to see parts of the auction listing.
Picture 1 Picture 2
Grave mishap Funeral director now recovering after fall in cemetery and hearse ride to hospital
AUGUSTA -- There are falls from
grace and falls into graves.
Take Leo Murphy's, for instance.
One misstep at the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery during a Sept. 20 burial service, and the longtime funeral director from Augusta found himself in a grave, looking up through a cloud of dust.
"I fell in the grave backwards," Murphy said, two and a half weeks into his recovery. "I hit my left side on the corner of the grave. All of a sudden, I saw a cloud of dust, and that's where I was in the hole."
A gloved hand reached down and Murphy, who will be 80 in two weeks, reached up with his right hand and was raised from the grave.
"A gentleman from the cemetery said, 'Leo, you all right?'," Murphy recalled. "I thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe."
Then his son, Pat, convinced him to get into the Plummer Funeral Home hearse to ride to the emergency room at MaineGeneral Medical Center.
"I was in the front seat when the security guard came around," Murphy said. "He said, 'Usually they don't come in this end.'"
Murphy was treated for two fractured ribs and a chest wall contusion, said another son, Michael.
"He pulled some boards for the casket to be lowered into a vault and then stepped back into the hole," said Michael Murphy, who got called on his day off to meet his dad at the hospital.
Luckily, Murphy had landed on his feet.
Murphy is feeling a little better.
"At least now I can laugh some," he said on Tuesday. "I'm eating pretty well and taking my medication."
He said it hurts to cough, sneeze, sigh, and yawn.
He said it was his first mishap at a grave in his 61 years as a funeral director.
And he's been getting some ribbing -- and get-well presents -- from his friends.
"I even got a Vermont 'doctor' bear from Roger Pomerleau," which carried the good wishes of Murphy's fellow Kiwanis members and a get-well poem from Don Tuttle.
The Murphy family operates Plummer Funeral Homes in Augusta and Windsor.
Mourners crash like 'dominoes' after cop
stops hearse
9:03AM Wednesday August 08, 2007
Mourners' vehicles crashed into each other "like dominoes" after a police officer pulled over the hearse leading the cortege near Te Anau.
Police have launched an internal investigation after the Te Anau policewoman ordered a hearse to pull over as it led a cortege of between 80 and 100 cars to the Te Anau cemetery last week, causing nose-to-tail crashes behind.
Three vehicles were damaged, two of them extensively, resulting in the policewoman having to ferry some mourners back to Te Anau.
There was speculation the incident was the funeral director's second brush with Te Anau police, who pulled him up for speeding en route to the town, the Southland Times reported.
This has been denied by the funeral director.
A son of the dead man, who was in the car behind the hearse, was "bloody furious" with police.
"I thought it was absolutely disgusting," he said.
"Here we are taking dad to the cemetery and we are all pulled over and there are accidents behind us. It was just like dominoes."
He said he could not understand how the policewoman could not know it was a funeral procession, and he wanted her to pay for the damage to the cars.
Southland police boss Inspector Tony O'Neill yesterday declined to comment on the incident, saying it was under investigation after a complaint was laid with police.
The hearse's lights were on, as were the lights of the 80 to 100 cars behind him.
The policewoman, parked on the opposite side of the road, had gestured at him to pull over, the funeral director said.
Three cars further back in the cortege crashed when it was brought to a halt.
Waipahi man Gerard Vallely, who was in the middle of the pile-up, estimated his speed at between 30km/h and 40km/h.
Mr Vallely said he managed to drive his car back to Te Anau but the occupants of a badly damaged Land Cruiser were taken back in the police car.
Mr O'Neill said it could be "some weeks" before the investigation was completed.
June 10th & 16th on Spike TV's Power Block, a drag race of 2 hearses was aired during the first commercial break of Extreme 4X4. It was a short video by willitmakeit.com.
By Chris Conrad June 17, 2007
Some people are a little disturbed by Jen Fogleman's purple 1954 Cadillac Superior Hearse.
Not that she cares.
Fogleman said she was at Rumor's Lounge the night before the Medford Cruise when a man pulled up a chair next to her to voice his displeasure about her ride.
"The guy just started going off about how creepy it was that I drive a hearse," Fogleman said.
"But my motto is, 'Don't let your first hearse ride be your last.' "
She bought the hearse five years ago in Southern California from a guy in a band. Since then she's kept it pretty much the same.
A bobble-headed Frankenstein monster doll is displayed proudly on the dash, along with a pair of black fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. The license plate reads: 6FT NDR.
Fogleman, who lives in Ruch, knew she would one day drive a hearse when as a little girl she saw the vampire film "Love At First Bite," which featured an old hearse. As she was leaving the theater she glimpsed a bat flying in the sky and took it as a sign.
"It's kind of a hobby car, but definitely my favorite car," she said. "I named her Stella."
Like Fogleman, Frank Huskey's passion for classic cars, namely a 1959 Chevy Impala, blossomed when he was a kid. He liked the big tail fins on his cousin's Impala.
Ten years ago, Huskey, who lives in Rogue River, rescued the Impala from a shed and began a serious restoration job.
"We got it, it had four flat tires, rats inside and needed serious body work," Huskey said.
The red sports coupe is now in pristine condition after $60,000 worth of work. He kept the original 348, though now it is encased in enough chrome that it hurts your eyes to look at it. Even the hood springs are chromed.
"At first we just wanted a car to cruise around in," he said. "But once you start working on these cars, it's hard to stop."
Reach reporter Chris Conrad at
776-4471, or e-mail cconrad@mailtribune.com.
Pottsville hearse a party machine
BY SHAWN A. HESSINGER TAMAQUA BUREAU CHIEF shessinger@republicanherald.com 6/4/2007 - ©The REPUBLICAN & Herald 2007
You might mistake it for a chariot of death, until you catch sight
of Snoopy and Woodstock painted on one window.
“Snoopy-6” on the rear license plate is another… well… dead give way.
Sure, DJ Brian Thomas’ black Cadillac is a hearse, an ’89 Fleetwood station wagon to be exact.
But the rear section is not carrying… well, you know.
It’s crammed with 1,000 pounds of audio gear and 1,500 CDs containing more than 140,000 songs collected over 14 years.
“October is my busy month. I don’t know why,” said the Pottsville man, wearing a straight face despite the obvious joke.
A rubber rat on the dash board and a front vanity plate reading “We rock ‘em dead” demonstrate why Thomas, who DJ’s under the name “BT Express,” is popular around Halloween.
The DJ said he bought his first hearse, a ’79 Cadillac of the same model, six or seven years ago when he discovered the rear suspension was better at handling the load than the three half-ton vans he’d owned before.
Rollers at the back door used for sliding in caskets made loading his equipment easier, too.
He bought his current hearse two years ago.
And Snoopy and Woodstock are the result of a lifelong love of the Peanuts characters.
Thomas dresses as one of the Blues Brothers, popularized by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, an idea he got after buying a black tux for a nephew’s wedding.
“He’s a good person,” said Wilhelminia Payne, deputy executive director of the Pottsville Housing Authority, adding Thomas often donates his time to the community.
Thomas said he launched his business 14 years ago volunteering for the Pottsville Jaycees’ annual New Year’s Eve ball drop.
Scott Bodell's moto-hearse service took 10 months and $20,000 to build. The service cost $565, plus mileage charges in certain areas. (Last Ryde Motorcycle Hearse Co.)
ERDA -- Scott Bodell has a hearse for motorcycle
enthusiasts on their last ride.
Bodell built a two-wheeled hearse that holds a casket while being
towed by a three-wheeled Harley-Davidson.
He said it took 10 months and $20,000 to build it.
"It's not unusual to hear people say, 'That's how I want
to go,'" Bodell said.
Indeed, A.J. Dawson saw the hearse while it was parked outside
Tate Mortuary in Tooele.
"I ride motorcycles and I love it," he said. "For
bikers, it's all about the ride, so this is the perfect way to
go."
The cost for a "moto-hearse" service is $565, plus mileage
charges in certain areas.
For people who prefer cremation, the hearse has a bumper sticker
that says, "We'll haul your dead ash."
Brian Wadsworth saw the hearse and didn't seem enthusiastic.
"I've always associated motorcycles with fun and vibrancy,
so I guess it's sort of a paradox," he said.
On the Net: http://www.lastryde.com
Indiana couple attracts stares with custom hearse
Written by Chauncey Ross
Saturday, 26 May 2007
There’s no waiting for Oct. 31 for Mark and Debbie Rotosky to blast “Monster Mash” from their stereo, decorate with skull-and-crossbones designs and bring out a set of ghoulish Chucky movie dolls.
Every day is Halloween for the Rotoskys as they cruise the streets of Indiana in their customized hearse, a 1986 Cadillac Brougham they bought in December from an Ohio funeral home.
“I wanted something really unique and different,” said Mark Rotosky.
The hearse is dressed for show and seemingly has turned into the Rotoskys’ automatic ticket to any gathering of two or more college students in town.
And it has that time-release jaw-drop factor.
At first, the Rotoskys’ vehicle casts a somber look from, say, a block away.
It has that long, sleek appearance. A set of immaculate whitewalls, a silver-gray paint job and an enlarged, rear compartment encased in a slightly darker gray, vinyl cap. A pair of decorative silver swooshes on the sides.
The amber emergency light on the roof can be forgiven as a serious feature. The hearse might have needed it in a town that didn’t provide police escorts for funeral processions.
It looks just so dignified until you pull up from behind and read the lettering in the rear window:
“Let’s put the FUN back in funeral!”
That’s where the creep show begins.
The Rotoskys’ hearse has a bumper sticker reading, “Come to the Darkside … we have cookies.”
The vanity license plate LST-RIDE (“last ride”) was Rotosky’s third choice.
PennDOT denied MEAT-WGN (“meat wagon”) and BONE-WGN (“bone wagon”) because they already were taken.
Mark Rotosky has fitted the hearse with neon lights, four inside and nine underneath.
“You go to all these car shows and you see basically the same things like Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs, and I wanted something you won’t see in a car show every day — and that’s a hearse,” Mark Rotosky said. “We’ve had it to the Fairgrounds Market car show at Butler — everybody loved it.”
The Rotoskys have also shown the vehicle at the Cadet Restaurant, along Route 422 near Kittanning.
Their plans are to show the hearse on June 2 at J.S. Mack Community Center, an event that benefits the YMCA, and June 16 in the annual summer Car Cruise in downtown Indiana.
“We have always liked haunted houses and scary movies, so it really fits in with us,” Debbie Rotosky said.
“We’ve been married 21 years and our son thought we went off the deep end when we bought this,” Mark Rotosky said.
Their son, Dustin, is a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
“He thinks we’re crazy but the other IUP students gather around and take pictures, they call us over and invite us to their fraternity parties,” Debbie Rotosky said. “They all think we’re cool!”
Mark Rotosky, 38, and Debbie Rotosky, also 38, The Rotoskys, both 38, live in Indiana and operate Clean Sweep, a commercial office- and worksite-cleaning business. They also have a daughter, Alyssa, 16, an 11th-grade cyber-school student.
“She thinks it’s great,” Debbie Rotosky said.
The hearse can match looks with the best of the hot rods, but on the four-lane — forget about it!
“Eventually I might put a bigger engine in it, but right now it’s all stock except for the stickers,” Rotosky said. “It doesn’t go fast. Once you get to 55, be happy — it takes forever to get there.”
For drivers encountering Rotosky on the road, riding by and blowing the hearse’s doors off on the bypass is no way to take in all its features. Find it parked downtown, stand up close and peer into the darkness.
A doll of Chucky, the grisly character from the horror film “Child’s Play,” returns the gaze from a side window. The “Bride of Chucky” looks out the opposite side.
They flank a coffin.
A “Seed of Chucky” doll sits inside the rear window near a dangling toy skeleton.
The sight of a hearse that makes folly of the Grim Reaper certainly strikes a nerve.
Passersby stop and gawk. Others nod or flash a thumbs-up when they drive by. No doubt it catches everyone’s eye.
“For every 100 people that see this car, 99 love it, maybe one person may hate it,” Mark Rotosky said. “And you also have out of the 100, maybe 25 asking, ‘Where can I buy one of these?’ All you have to do is contact your local funeral home. If they own the car and are looking to buy a new one, they’ll gladly sell you their old one …”
For the record, Rotosky bought the hearse with 36,000 miles on Dec. 1, and says he has documented its history. Brand new 21 years ago, it sold for $68,000. Today, a new one with the same equipment would run $100,000, he estimated.
His price: $600.
Accessories have cost another $300.
The curtains on the rear and side windows of the casket compartment bear skull-and-crossbones designs. So does the front license plate.
The handle on the gearshift lever is a skull.
It has skulls on the top of the door lock knobs. Skulls on the rear-view mirror.
Skulls on tips of the air valve stems on the tires.
The main prop is a real casket, with a pleasant, sky-blue lining. Mark Rotosky said it came from an Westmoreland Armstrong County surplus dealer specializing in stuff salvaged from Hurricane Katrina.
“There’s a guy in Lower Burrell … he has 600 of them that were in the hurricane down south, and he is selling them for $100 apiece,” he said. “Basically you gotta pick through them until you find a good casket.”
“That one has no water damage,” Debbie Rotosky said.
The crowning touch: a $1,000 stereo system with 10-inch subwoofers behind the seats driven by a 400-watt amp housed in back under the casket “so it rocks,” Mark Rotosky said.
Suitable for testing the enforcement of Indiana’s noise ordinance?
“Uh-huh!” Debbie Rotosky grinned. “We had it down at IUP in front of the field house, we had it parked with the neon lights on and the stereo going. The college kids wanted to get pictures, and the campus cops actually came down and kicked us out. They said that we were going to cause a riot.”
Strip away the trimmings, and the Rotoskys’ hearse could be pressed into practical service for its designed purpose.
Mark Rotosky says it has all the structural requirements, such as a strong suspension system, to be registered as a hearse with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation — though he conceded he’s not sure of the significance.
A check of the PennDOT Web site shows hearses are categorized with ambulances as special-purpose vehicles and carry a $54 annual registration fee. Hearses also are exempt from restrictions on window tinting.
“Eventually it’s going to have a nice paint job. We want to get a black paint job with red blood coming up from the bottom,” Debbie Rotosky said. “We’re trying to get it into WyoTech (Wyoming Technical Institute, an automotive trade school near Blairsville) as one of their project cars and see if they could do the paint job for us.”
That could complete the look in time for the Rotoskys to celebrate the first real Halloween with a party on wheels.
“Our kids are all grown up, we may as well have fun now,” Debbie Rotosky said.
“We have our motorcycle, we have our truck, now we have this — just toys, you know,” Mark Rotosky said. “We’re going through our midlife crisis, I guess you could say.”
Better midlife than afterlife.
Recently, a funeral procession wended its way southward to the Safford Cemetery.
There was no way at all to identify it as a funeral procession from the rear. The vehicles proceeded south in the outside lane, maybe 40 to 50 vehicles, with the hearse at the head.
Other southbound traffic in the inside lane was deterred from passing the procession by a large truck, some 10 vehicles behind the hearse, splitting the lanes and effectively blocking the open southbound lane.
Northbound traffic, also, had pulled over and waited for the procession to pass.
As I, southbound, approached the traffic
slowdown around the Circle K, I moved to the inside lane and proceeded,
not realizing what was occurring until I had passed 75 percent
of the procession and encountered the truck, which pulled left
in order to prevent my passage and that of other motorists behind
me.
Now, I have as much respect for a funeral as anyone, but, especially considering our local growth and the increasing traffic load on First Avenue (US Highway 191), there are far too many folks who don’t know what is legally required here.
As stated in Arizona Revised Statute 28-776, licensed funeral escorts are to be used to identify such processions. There were none.
Furthermore, even when licensed escorts are present, the law states that right-of-way shall be given to the procession by motorists and pedestrians. Normal traffic progress is not an impediment of the right-of-way as they travel in the unused lane, in this case, the inside southbound lane.
Nor is any northbound traffic required to stop and pull over as the procession passes... Respect is fine, but, as traffic volume increases, the stress due to conflicting interpretation of the laws is bound to cause dangerous situations, including road rage and accidents.
The large truck that impeded southbound traffic in the inside lane obviously meant well, but the driver was, as are so many, ignorant of the law and could have been ticketed for impeding traffic.
I have driven in far too many of these funeral processions myself, both here in Safford and elsewhere. The public and the funeral industry desperately need an education in the laws before one sad funeral leads to another.
Norm Johnson Safford - 5/23/07
May 16, 2007
Runaway hearse visits radio station
By Tom Smith
Senior Staff Writer
SHEFFIELD -- Jerry Knight said he had never had anything like
that happened before in his life.
"I thought they were coming to get me,'' said Knight, sales manager at WBTG-Radio, on Gospel Lane, Sheffield.
About 10 a.m. Tuesday, a hearse parked at the Church of God of Prophecy for a funeral apparently jumped out of gear and rolled down the hillside straight into the back of the radio station's production room.
Knight was in the production room with program director Dan Michael working on a commercial.
"You talk about frightening, that was frightening. (The hearse) didn't come into the building, but it hit hard enough that a few of the concrete blocks were knocked into the building,'' Knight said. "And with no windows in the room, we had no idea what was happening until we got outside and saw that hearse stuck in the side of the building.''
Station owner Paul Slatton said it took about two hours for the station to be repaired. "But we never went off the air,'' he said.
Slatton said the vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car, came right by the station tower and a guide wire that secured the tower.
"That was what was so amazing. It came straight down the hill into the building,'' said Knight.
"It could have been a lot worse,'' Slatton said.
He said the hearse hit the building with such force that it shook everything, knocking some items off walls.
Gilbert Prince, of Spry Memorial Chapel, Russellville, said he doesn't know what happened with the hearse.
"It was just a freakish thing. The hearse had been parked and then someone said, 'where's the hearse?' We looked around and it was gone,'' Prince said. "It was at the bottom of the hill."
Prince said the incident did not disrupt the funeral.
The vehicle was damaged enough that another hearse had to be called and used for the procession to the cemetery.
"(The incident) didn't cause the family any unwarranted anguish,'' Prince said.
Knight said Tuesday's incident is one he won't soon forget.
"Of course, one of the first things you do is react, and we did,'' he said. "It was probably the quickest I've moved in many years.''
Tom Smith can be reached at tom.smith@timesdaily.com.
Copyright © 2007 TimesDaily
5/12/2007
Man uses hearse to stalk ex-girlfriend
ELYRIA -- An Elyria man, who police say was drunk Thursday night, is accused of using a hearse to ram his ex-girlfriend's car.
Jeffrey Laubenthal, 43, 257 Washington Ave., saw his ex-girlfriend's car stopped at a traffic light on Washington Ave. at Broad St., sped up and smashed into her car, she told Elyria Police. The force pushed her car onto Broad St and he squealed his tired and rammed her again, a police report said.
After the second crash, Laubenthal leaned out of the window of the Laubenthal Funeral Home hearse and yelled obscenities at her, she told police. Police found black scuff marks and chipped paint on her car, the report says.
The woman told police her neck snapped back during the alleged incidents and she had a severe headache. She was not hospitalized, Elyria police Lt. Andy Eichenlaub said.
The woman, who works at Boomers bar, 305 Broad St., told police that Laubenthal came into the bar for drinks at 6 p.m. that night. She served him three shots of Jaegermeister and Red Bull and two Budweiser Selects within an hour, the report states.
The woman told a manager at the bar that Laubenthal has been stalking her, according to the report. The manager kicked Laubenthal out of the bar and he punched a hole in the wall near the men's restroom, the report says.
While police were talking to the woman at the Elyria police station, Laubenthal called her several times, the report says, yelling profanities. He hung up when she passed the phone to an officer, police said.
An officer called Laubenthal from a department phone and asked him how much he had to drink, the report says. He responded, ''Dude, it's my birthday, I've been drinking all day,'' according to the report.
When police went to his home, Laubenthal denied ramming his ex-girlfriend's car and punching a hole in the wall at Boomers, the report says. Police arrested Laubenthal after they saw damage to the grill of the hearse, the report says.
He is charged with felonious assault, operating a vehicle while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident and assured clear distance. Laubenthal did not enter pleas during an arraignment in Elyria Municipal Court yesterday.
Municipal Judge John Musson released Laubenthal on bond and ordered no contact with the woman and to stay at least 100 feet away from her, according to court records. His next hearing has been set for June 12.
The hearse was not towed because Laubenthal was at home when police arrested him, Eichenlaub said. Laubenthal refused to take field sobriety tests and a breath test, police said.
©The Morning Journal 2007
FORMER paint sprayer from Bolton has launched a website - allowing gamblers to place bets on when famous people will die.
A bad-taste sweepstake, once popular among office staff, has been modified into an online celebrity death sweepstake.
www.coffindodgers.co.uk set up as a spoof website four weeks ago by Peter Mundy, aged 39, of Kearsley, and it attracted a surprising reception.
"Before we committed ourselves, we did a test with family and friends," he said.
"But since we put it live on the internet, it's gone down an absolute storm. The amount of hits per day - around 1,000 - is unreal."
Mr Mundy, who drives around in a yellow hearse, insisted that he ethically designed the website to bypass controversy.
"We wanted it to be fun. We've just gone with nature. Dying is just a part of life, its' the most natural thing in the world - you come, you go," he said.
Top of the list, because of his old age, is 101-year-old scientist Albert Hofmann.
Former snooker player Alex Higgins is in second place while actor Andy Griffith, aged 80, is third.
The site invites people to pay £12.75 to take part in their "online death sweepstake". The site then randomly selects a "coffindodger" from the list and emails the name to the customer. If that person dies, the gambler collects £400.
The website is updated every day to confirm who, if any, people have passed away.
"If someone was to die, it would be updated immediately," said Peter.
Mr Mundy said he was yet to receive a complaint. He believes
that the humour, originality and his banana yellow hearse keep
the website alive.
5/12/07
Picture Gallery
On February 23rd, 2007, the hearse pictured below was involved in some CARnage on CMT's Country Fried Home Videos. This was made possible by willitmakeit.com.
Want to see the car in action, click here for a photo
To see the segment from Country Fried Home Videos,
Go to the Photos/Videos page or click here.
Who's taking you home - a hearse?
1/6/2007
Police throughout Wales are stepping up the pressure this summer in a concerted effort to deter people from driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The campaign will be based on the slogan: “Who’s taking you home - a hearse, a police car, an ambulance or a taxi?”
The campaign starts on June 4th and the likelihood of drivers being stopped by police during this time will increase.
Police say it is of real concern that despite significant improvements over recent years together with advertising campaigns and education programmes, people are still being killed or seriously injured as a direct result of drink driving.
"Indeed there is evidence to suggest that the problem of young men willing to risk all by driving while drunk is re emerging. Any amount of alcohol or drugs in the body can affect a person’s driving ability and judgment. Coupled with youthful exaggeration of driving ability it makes for a fatal combination.
“It is a major concern that in the 2006 All Wales campaign, 416 people were found to be over the prescribed limit. Almost half of these were young drivers aged between 17 and 25 years,” said Chief Superintendent Geraint Anwyl, Head of the Operational Support Division, North Wales Police, who are heading this year’s campaign.
He added: “While we will be looking carefully at young drivers, this operation will look at drink drivers across the board. 500 people lose their lives in the UK every year as a result of drunken driving. The impact on families is lifelong and harrowing.
"89% of the public named drink driving as one of their top three concerns (THINK! Annual Survey 2006).
"In light of such public support the campaign will be vigorous in an effort to make our roads safer for all."
Anyone with information regarding individuals who are believed to drive while over the legal limit can contact Crimestoppers anonymously and confidentially with any information on 0800 555 111.