Police said Friday that the Santa Fe man who was burned over 80 percent of his body at a northwest-side electrical substation died at an Arizona hospital. Aaron Vigil, 18, died at the Arizona Burn Center in Phoenix, where he was taken after a Wednesday afternoon incident apparently caused by his trying to spray-paint graffiti on high-voltage equipment.
On Wednesday afternoon, police say, Vigil climbed a high, graffiti-covered concrete wall topped with razor wire to get inside a Public Service Company of New Mexico substation near Buckman Road. Officials say a stream of spray paint might have caused 115,000 volts of electricity to arc into his body, leaving him only partially clothed and badly burned.
The incident caused $20,000 in damage to an electrical transformer, Montaño said Friday. State officials also have blamed the momentary power outage caused by the incident for knocking out computer service to various state agencies, including a statewide crash of the state Motor Vehicle Division’s computer system.
Originally, I was going to comment on his cellphone being robust enough to survive electrocution. Now, it appears his “associates” may have had his phone and made the 911 call.
Give this guy the Darwin award and then put the Mythbusters on the case.
The headline begs the question of decision-making propensities tangling with the principles of Evolution (see article farther down). Certainly the tagger’s decision processes have removed him from the gene pool, but were they any less careful than, say, those decision processes that landed us in Iraq?
Can’t say that a mourn.
I feel bad for the transformer … and all those people *snif* waiting in line at the DMV …
I have a two year old nokia burner that I dropped in the toilet and it still works.High voltage electricity has a lethal learning curve.
Lets see, who can we sue for this, hmmmmm
#2, Peter,
Yes.
THE DMV admin should be sacked. No UPS???
The power company should be liable for not having machine gun coverage to keep the mopes off of their equipment therebye causing interruption of power delivery to paying customers.
# 8, DITTO!
A whole new breed of warning signs has just been invented. I wish I owned a sign company.
At least the gean pool is a little clearer.
Don
Ok….we all KNOW the lawsuit is coming from the 2 slack jaws that bred this idiot. Sad part is, they will probablt be rich slack jaws in a couple years.
I only wish more of the worthless taggers could die like this
Too bad natural selection is so slow on the human scale. It creates the appearance that the gene pool has no lifeguard. However, here and there, a few are removed. Perhaps if we can survive long enough, our species will improve from the pathetic mess in which we currently find ourselves.
Or, perhaps we just need to keep breeding stupider. Vonnegut made the point about humans having exactly the wrong size brain. If it were larger, we would be smart enough to avoid the problems we get into. If it were smaller, we couldn’t get into such problems. So, a change in either direction might help.
To me, even given the odd case like this, I think we’re breeding toward lower intelligence.
115,000 Volts!!! Great Scot!!!
I bet that if he had stayed in school, this lesson would have come up in physics class, or something.
This was a MAN, not a BOY, not a teen….
SOMEONE didnt teach him a few basics of ELECTRICTY…
ANy liquid CONDUCTS.
Any Ionized material CAN conduct.
This wires on top of the POLE at UP THERE, because Electricity, can JUMP a FOOT or MORE….VERY easily…
I really don’t like how everybody is talking negative about Aaron, he is my older brother and he was an artist, his friend pushed him into doing this, and seeing all these comments about him being a worthless tagged and he shouldve went to school and learned something?, he was a HUGE part of my life and it’s like havin one of your family members dying, I wouldnt say bad stuff about them. Just please leave him alone he was a great brother and loving one two, I’m 15 and this is my role model
Our Darwin award winner also knocked out power in much of Santa Fe that day.
A guy I know that manages a computer room up there found out that his power supply management system certainly wasn’t uninterruptible.
#12 – We are breeding down. I just re-read “The Marching Morons” by CM Kornbluth – it still show remarkable foresight.
#11 – too bad all taggers couldn’t die like this.
Maybe you felt like an adult when you were 18, but I assure you, you were an idiot and still a child.
The kid was stupid, but that doesn’t mean that he deserved to die. I think 6 months of scrubbing graffiti off of walls would be a lot more appropriate.
The sad thing is the parents will be saying how he was a good kid that never did anything like this in the past. Of course these will be the same parents that believe that kids need to learn leasons for themselves….mmmmm…I think he did.
He is my older brother.. And to be honest he really never did that stuff okay so please stop being cruel, it’s like me calling your family member dumb
HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA!
This story really brightened my day. I hate grafitti “artists” with a passion.
Grafitti is usually the first (and sometimes only) indicator that you have just crossed into a “bad” neighborhood.
I say lets paint some big prominent walls pure white, surround them with a fence and electrify them with 115,000 volts. Someone can stop by every morning and sweep up the burned clothes and spray cans.