[Oropharyngeal impalement in a case of paranoid hallucinatory schizophrenia]

Self-inflicted impalement is a rarity in forensic autopsies. The case of a 32-year-old man, who was found dead lying on a suburban street, is reported and compared with the relevant literature. A 5-cm-thick wooden stick with blood traces protruded from the oral cavity. At autopsy, it was found that the wooden post, which had a total length of 28 cm, filled the entire oral cavity with the pointed end being located at the entrance of the larynx with lacerations of the posterior wall of the pharynx. There were no signs of asphyxia or involvement of another party. As secondary findings, fresh hesitation cuts could be demonstrated on the right forearm. Death was assumed to have been caused by reflectory cardiac or respiratory arrest similar to bolus death. The police investigations showed that the man had suffered from paranoid hallucinatory schizophrenia for 12 years with 3 previous attempts to commit suicide and had been discharged from inpatient treatment in a psychiatric institution only 4 days before his death. The pattern of injuries is described and an attempt is made to reconstruct the course of events on the basis of the results of the police investigations and the psychiatric documentation. The rare case of self-inflicted fatal impalement is compared with other reports in the literature.