Suicidal hanging resulting in complete decapitation: a case report

Abstract

This paper reports the case of a 22-year-old man, weighing 87.5 kg, who committed suicide by jumping from a bridge over a canal with a nylon rope tied around his neck. The drop height was between 3.70 and 5.30 m before the rope tightened and the subject was completely beheaded. The head sank straight under the bridge, while the torso floated 205 m downstream. Pertinent autopsy findings were a sharp decapitation wound with circumferential skin abrasion and cervical spin transection between C1 and C2. Decapitation is a complication of extreme rarity in the event of a suicidal hanging and is always related to a drop of several metres with a poorly extensible line used as the hanging ligature.

Complete decapitation of a motorcycle driver due to a roadblock chain

“…In hanging-related decapitations, the severance line is usually located at C1-2 or C2-3 [6][7][8][9]. Most of the vertebrae remain intact, but the corresponding intervertebral discs are torn apart by tearing and shearing forces [6].…”

Decapitation by the Force to the Body: A Case Report and a Review of the Literature

“…Sharp tool Clear-cut wound [16,17] Band-like abrations, and several incisions [16] Blunt facial injuries, several stab wounds in the body [16] None [16,17] Suicide/Homicide [16,17] Hanging Irregularly shaped defects [9] Sharp-edged lacerations with band-like abrasions [10] Laceration with wavy abrasion [11] Circumferential skin abrasion [12] None [9][10][11][12] Suicide [9][10][11][12] Animal Bite marks and tissue defects [13] Tooth puncture wounds [14] None [13,14] Accident [13,14] Explosion Sharp-edged gaping lacerations [15] Lacerations and contusions in all region [15] Suicide/Homicide [15] Vehicle assisted Clear-cut wounds with demarcated abrasions [1,4,6,8], Band-like abrations [2,5] Irregular [3,4] Liner abrasions with thinner erosion [7] None [1,2,4,[6][7][8] Abrasions on the limbs [3] Rib fractures …”

“…In most of the cases, these objects act around the neck directly. The force for decapitation by blunt instrument is strongish, such as vehicle-assisted ligature strangulation [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], suicidal hanging [9][10][11][12], rarely, attacks by animal such as dog and so on [13,14], and explosion [15]. However, any strong force is not necessary for decapitation by sharp instrument [16,17].…”

“…However, any strong force is not necessary for decapitation by sharp instrument [16,17]. Most of suicidal decapitations can be performed by hanging rope [1,2,6,[8][9][10][11][12], wheels of train [4], and sharp instrument [16]. Homicidal decapitation can be mostly performed by sharp instruments such as knife, saw and scissors [17].…”

Suicide with self-contrived guillotine

“…In den letzten Jahrzehnten erschienen nur wenige Publikationen zu Suizidfällen mithilfe einer Guillotine oder guillotineähnlichen Konstruktionen, so beispielsweise von Nowak u. Seidl [8], Shorrock [18] sowie Šidlo et al [19]. Darüber hinaus sind zahlreiche andere Arten der suizidalen Dekapitation beschrieben; häu-fig unter diesen sind insbesondere Dekapitationen im Zusammenhang mit Zugü-berfahrungen [2,4,7,29] und verschiedenen Erhängungsvorgängen [5,9,10,13,15,22,24]. Ferner finden sich beispielsweise andere fahrzeugassistierte Dekapitationen [1,12,25,28], aber auch das Fallen in eine freie Schlinge [27], eine Explosion im Kopf-Hals-Bereich [17] und weitere suizidale Dekapitationsvarianten [14,21].…”