The Darwin Awards

Here is a picture of the dumpster on Freudenmacher Alley where Gladiz Polanco-Ramos's body was allegedly dumped by her ex-boyfriend.

I recall seeing a movie on TV about an insurance investigator which traveled the country to study deaths deserving of "Darwin Awards".  Basically, the Darwin went to people who did something so stupid to get themselves killed that they distinguished themselves as someone deserving of being taken out of the human gene pool.

Back in the first decades of the 20th century eugenics was popular.  Eugenics was the idea that medical professionals and scientists should take steps to keep all people with inferior genes from reproducing so that the quality of the human race could be improved over time.  Needless to say, after World War II, this theory went out of vogue.

The concept of people of inferior intelligence corrupting the human race by being allowed to reproduce still is a part of popular culture.  In addition to "Darwin Awards", another movie which humorously looks at the theory is "Idiocracy", which is about a rather dumb GI that is placed in suspended animation in a military experiment and wakes up in the distant future to save the human race from leaders who encourage the watering of crops with Gatorade.  It seems that in the future, the white hillbillies and minorities from the urban ghettos take over the world and need the help of the GI who happens to be the smartest person alive at the time.

Back to Trenton.  Well in recent weeks we have had a few people in the news that did monumentally stupid things that deserve awards,  Here they are:

Mayor Mack's former chief of staff Paul Sigmund gets the "clean living award" for getting caught buying heroin on East Hanover Street a stone's throw from city hall.  It seems he was noticed loitering on the corner of North Stockton and East Hanover by a cop that didn't recognize him.  When the cop approached him, he took off only to be stopped on East Hanover about an hour later with seven decks of heroin on his person.

Mr. Sigmund was on the job in the number two position in city hall for a few weeks before this.  Not only did Paul Sigmund hold a top position in Trenton city government, he comes from a long line of famous people.  His mother was Barbara Sigmund, who was mayor of Princeton back in the 1980s.  Her father was a congressman from Louisiana.  Barbara Sigmund's mother served out the remainder of the term after her husband died.  Paul Sigmund's father was a Princeton University professor and his aunt is Cokie Roberts, a reporter for National Public Radio and ABC News.  I guess the apple sometimes falls far from the tree.  Here is a link to the story from NJ.Com.  http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2011/05/trenton_mayors_chief_of_staff_2.html

The "green living award" goes to illegal immigrant David Lopez who killed his ex-girlfriend Gladiz Polanco-Ramos and deposited her body in a dumpster a short distance from his house.  He recently broke up with Polanco-Ramos, but returned to her house at 12 Roebling Avenue and got into a loud argument with her, that attracted the attention of neighbors who saw him walk out the front door of his house, go around the corner and deposit her body about 200 feet from her house.  That takes brains you know.  Nothing like the cops having witnesses that saw you throw your ex's warm body in the dumpster.  Well, at least he was considerate of others and the environment and did not leave the body to rot in the house.  No he put trash in its place and disposed of it properly.  Here is a link to the story from NJ.Com.  http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2011/05/trenton_murder_suspect_in_cust.html

The "parents of the year award" goes to Plesie Nicholas and her live-in boyfriend Anthony Roberson, who are accused of tying Nicholas' 8-year old daughter up to door knobs and their South Logan Street home's staircase.  The little girl sustained rope marks which cut through the skin almost to the bone and the child is in danger of losing one of her arms due to the abuse.

The child was discovered when Mercer County Sheriff's officers showed up at the house to arrest Roberson on an unrelated warrant.  The little girl approached detectives and asked them to take her away from her mother.  When asked why she wanted to be taken away, the girl said her mother doesn't feed her and she has to steal food and she said her mother ties her up.  The officer noticed marks on her arm and had paramedics examine her.  The paramedics found her injuries to be worse than originally suspected.  The sheriff's officers noted that the house was filthy and filled with dead rodents and garbage.  Here is a link to the story on NJ.Com.   http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2011/05/trenton_couple_charged_child_abuse.html

Speaking of abuse and torture, there is the case of the 15-year old girl who was kidnapped by her boyfriend and held in the attic of an Ingham Avenue house for three days.  She was not given any food and received very little water.  The boyfriend sexually assaulted her druing this time.  In addition she was burned with cigarettes and beaten during her captivity.  After she escaped from the house by climbing out a window when the boyfriend left the property for a while, she was examined at a local hospital and her bruises and cigarette burns were documented.

According to the boyfriend's lawyer, the girl is just making up the story and that it is a "Trenton tradition" for disgruntled girlfriends to frame their boyfriends by alledging rape and abuse.

See the following link from The Trentonian for more about this story.  http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2011/05/20/news/doc4dd578b2c4b71083534448.txt

So there it is, we live in a wonderful city don't we?

Unlike the previous stories, the following incident did not happen recently, but rather occurred about 15 years ago.  Perhaps for that reason, I was unable to find any references to it on the Internet, but it shows the Darwinistic nature of some of the people in this town and is worth recounting.

An article appeared in the Trentonian about a woman and two men who lived at a house on the 700 block of East State Street.  I believe this happened sometime in the 1990s.  For reference, the 700 block is the block just after State and Chambers going toward town.  This is a pretty rough area and back then was home to scores of alcoholics, drug addicts and gang bangers.  A harder than typical ghetto area.

The woman was walking through a state parking lot and came upon a gallon wine bottle which contained a green liquid.  Her reaction was that someone left some moonshine and I am going to take it home.  So she went back to her room in a house where the men also rented rooms and drank some of the "wine".  She got sick and died.

The men heard about the wine and the death and decided to take the bottle before the police arrived to investigate the death.  From what I remember one of the men recounted to the Trentonian reporter. that he and his buddy were "aiming to get high" and that explained "where their heads were at."  So one of the men figured that if the wine killed the woman it must be really good stuff and if they drink just a few sips of it they probably would get real high.  So that's what they did and they got sick and went to the emergency room to have their stomachs pumped.

It turned out that the "wine" was discarded antifreeze containing ethylene glycol.  Small amounts of this sweet liquid have been known to kill. 

True Darwin material, these three chaps.