Chicken bones

My local freesheet has placard boards outside newsagents in the area this week declaring, 'Man Chokes to Death on Railway Platform.'
Tragic though this undoubtedly was for the poor man and his loved ones, it raises two salutory lessons for copywriters.
Either the placard headline writer had no knowledge at all of syntax, and walked into the oldest school-textbook trap of all; or the placard headline writer knew exactly what he was doing, and thought it was funny. Which it is, but inappropriately so.
Either way, traps like these await all of us when we're writing, especially when we lose concentration or get bored.