He should have his hitman license revoked

I don’t usually make a practice of linking to & writing about kooky news stories (exception 1, exception 2), but this one is pretty awesome.  So, a 51 year old female nurse gets attacked with a claw hammer by an intruder, manages to disarm him & then spin him round & choke-hold him until he dies.  Later, the police discover (in the intruder/burglar’s possessions) a note with the nurse’s husband’s name & cell phone number, and it comes to light that the burglar was in fact a hired killer.  The world’s worst hired killer. 

I can only hope the soon to be ex-husband did not pay this man in advance - what kind of bargain basement discount assassin store did the husband go to for this guy?  This killer clearly learned his trade from the same school of badass as the NJ Bear who was tree’d by a housecat.  I love that the AP article mentions that the nurse was “a large woman”, and that the would-be killer, an adult video store custodian, was “slight”.  Ya think? 

This whole story reminds me of my friend Chris’ (now ex)girlfriend, who was attacked by a demented lunatic in a park in Arlington, VA, while she was out for a jog way back in 1997.  The guy leaped from behind the bushes on a jogging path, armed with a claw hammer and tried to hammer this woman to death.  Again, she fought this guy off, and before she collapsed from her injuries, he had fled into the wilderness, only to be arrested a couple days later when the woman ID’d a mug shot.

I’m not sure what it is about lunatics with claw hammers, but it’s clearly the weapon of ambivalence among murderers.  I don’t know much about successful professional murderers, but it’s clear to me that if you’re not totally good at your craft, maybe you’re not sure who you’re attacking, or how you’ll flee the scene, or whether your victim could disarm/overpower/strangle you, then you probably head to the toolshed and grab what’s handy before leaving for work.

P.S., though I couldn’t resist the reference to the NJ bear post in the title of this entry, I really strongly wanted to go with my first choice, “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em.”