Aw, but this awesome story of self-pwnage in today's paper is even better (had to cut 'n' paste whole story on here, seems directly linking to the story doesn't work, bolded the fun stuff).
Suspect’s life comes to ironic end
By Abhi Raghunathan
araghunathan@tampabay.com
Some people get away with murder. Some would say Robert Mann was one of them.
Back in 1996, he sold crack cocaine to a sometime roofer named Anthony Small. In*stead of paying, Small stuffed a few pieces in his mouth and started pedaling away on a bi*cycle.
Mann did what dope slingers sometimes do when deals go sour. He pulled out a gun and opened fire, police said.
Small, a 48-year-old man who family mem*bers say tried his best to stay out of trouble, was killed.
All the evidence pointed to Mann as the killer, St. Petersburg police said, but there wasn’t enough evidence for prosecutors to charge him. He was arrested a few days later for shooting at someone else. He ended up doing five years on charges that included aggravated assault, firing into a vehicle, rob*bery and illegally carrying a gun.
He got out in 2001, but returned for a year in 2004 for grand theft auto.
He was out again in 2005.
That seemed to be the end of an unhappy story: Man killed, murderer on the loose.
••• Then, on April 6, 2007, Mann was argu*ing with his girlfriend over a cell phone. He threatened to break up with her, saying she shouldn’t have left at him at a club.
He was outside a home in the 2800 block of 16th Avenue S, holding a mixed drink in one hand and the phone in the other. A .357*caliber revolver was tucked inside a belt at his back, along the right side of his body.
Mann, 27, dropped something, probably the drink or phone. He crouched down, so that his chest was between his legs.
Then, a bullet fired.
Turns out the revolver in his shorts had an abnormally light trigger pull. By bending down, he set it off.
The bullet entered his body through the back of his right thigh and flew out the front of his thigh. Then, because of his crouch, the bullet blasted a hole on the ride side of his chest, about 5 inches below his shoulders.
It flew up, and punched another hole as it streaked out of his back right shoulder. It kept going.
Next, the bullet entered his neck, tear*ing a hole shaped like a diamond. It pushed through to his brain, finally coming to a stop just beneath the crown of his head.
It had been one long, clean straight shot. Three entrance wounds, two exit wounds. The resulting crime scene was so messy that police first wondered if someone had killed Mann. But as they examined him and spoke to those who heard just one gunshot, they realized that he had accidentally killed himself.
••• Even as police wrapped up their inquiry into Mann’s death, the investigation into Anthony Small’s murder technically re*mained open. A few months ago, Sgt. Mike Kovacsev, the head of St. Petersburg’s ho*micide unit, was going through old cases when he realized Mann, the likely culprit, was dead.
He called Small’s family. They said they had heard the news, and thanked him.