Death by oranges

These are South African oranges -- Valencias, I believe. [Don't Valencias come from Spain? Ed.] The may look soft and juicy, but that's just on the inside. Until you peel them, they're quite hard.

Hard enough, in fact, to kill a person, if thrown at him with force and in quantity. At least, that's the theory police in South Africa's Limpopo province are working on to explain the sudden death of a farm worker near the tiny town of Tzaneen.

AP reports today that two men are suspected of killing the unnamed peasant by pelting him with oranges. Citing eyewitness accounts, police Lt. Col. Moatshe Ngoepe said the suspects allegedly argued with the man, then collected oranges and began hurling them at him. "They started pelting the deceased with all those loose oranges," he said, "killing him on the spot."

Really? The cop cautioned that an investigation was still underway and aspects of a case he described as "complicated" still had to be verified. However, the farm worker was decidedly dead, declared so at the scene, yet he had no "visible injury", suggesting he may have suffered blunt trauma. Results of an autopsy are awaited.