Walking Dead stuntman dies after fall on set

ATLANTA — A stuntman for TV show The Walking Dead has died after falling on the set.

John Bernecker, 33, died on Wednesday at an Atlanta hospital after falling on the show’s set in Senoia, about 56 kilometres south of Atlanta, Coweta County Coroner Richard Hawk said Friday.

Bernecker died from bluntforce trauma and his death is considered accidental, Hawk said.

The Walking Dead, the oftengory AMC show based on a comic series about people fighting to survive a zombie apocalypse, is filming its eighth season.

Phone and email messages left for AMC representatives were not returned. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation, an agency spokesman said.

Bernecker’s death is the first on-set in the United States since an audio technician for the show Cops was killed during a shootout in Omaha, Nebraska, in August 2014. Cameraman Bryce Dion, 38, was killed at the scene of an attempted armed robbery at a fast-food restaurant by a stray bullet from a police officer’s gun.

In February 2014, Sarah Jones, 27, died when a freight train slammed into a film crew shooting Midnight Rider, a movie about the life of singer Gregg Allman.

The crash happened on a Georgia railroad bridge where the crew was filming actor William Hurt in a hospital bed that was placed on the tracks, even though owner CSX Transportation had denied permission to production managers.

A lawsuit filed by Jones’ parents, who live in Columbia, South Carolina, is being heard in court in Savannah. It says CSX shares equal blame with production managers, who did not tell Jones and other crew members they were trespassing. They say the railroad should have taken safety precautions to slow the train. CSX lawyers say the full blame lies with the Midnight Rider production managers.

The film’s director, Randall Miller, spent a year in jail after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and trespassing, and the film was never finished.