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Thrill-Seeking Teens Find Corpse, Man With Machete

Teens Fire BB Gun At Hanged Dead Man

POSTED: 11:38 am PST October 31, 2006

Authorities in Idaho said some teenagers out for a Halloween scare got a lot more fright than they bargained for.

According to Kootenai County, Idaho, sheriff's detectives, the group had been at a Halloween party in Coeur d'Alene Friday night when they decided to go "ding dong ditching," which means ringing doorbells and running away. While doing that, they noticed a house under construction. They thought it would be scary inside, so in they went.

When the teens entered the home, they saw what looked like bags hanging from the rafters in the unfinished basement, they shot some BB guns and threw chunks of lumber at it, according to the sheriff's department. One teen told investigators that when his BB hit the object, it sounded like it hit a coat or a pair of pants, according to The Spokesman-Review.

Then they left and came back with a flashlight to discover it was the body of a man hanging from the rafters.

They screamed and went back to the party, the paper reported, but nobody believed them. So they got someone to go back to the house with them. When they arrived the owner, 65-year-old Norman Giddings, met them with a machete and told them to get down on the ground while he summoned authorities. A report said Giddings told the teens "he would bust their heads open."

The paper reported that Giddings told deputies he was at his nearby home when a neighbor called to tell him that there were people inside the home he was having built. He told investigators that he took his daughter, and a machete "for protection" when he went to investigate.

Deputies said it's not likely any charges will be filed. Giddings told the deputies that he didn't want to press charges because the teens "had been through enough."

The chief deputy coroner told the paper that the man had hanged himself not long before the teens entered the home. She also said that there were no injuries to the man's body that would indicate it had been hit by a BB.

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