It's Like That Time the Macy's Santa Had a Heart Attack

A Long Beach fishing trip for elementary school kids from LA turned into a foreseeable-future of bedtime hell for their parents when a deckhand on the boat died during the outing.

Death during a school trip is bad enough, but it's actually worse than that. Here's why.

1. The deckhand, Jeff Twaddle (yes, that is was his real name), died in front of the children.

2. He didn't have a stroke or cardiac arrest or even a slip-and-fall accident. He choked to death.

3. He choked to death because, to get some laughs out of the kids, he put a small bait fish into his mouth, presumably to joke that the fish was going to kill him. Which it did.

4. One presumes that the boat was already on the water, so the kids probably didn't have many places to go where they wouldn't see the already or soon-to-be dead guy.

I guess it could have been worse. A shark could have swooped over the ship and bit off a chunk down to the waist.

(Creepy heart-attack photo credit: Encyclopedia Dramatica.)
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