STRANGE DEATHS

UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

A man was stabbed to death in a violent altercation at a Croydon vigil held to commemorate the victim of another knife attack. Reece Young, 23, was one of a small group of friends who had gathered on 30 March to remember Tai Jordan O’Donnell, 19, who bled to death after being knifed at the same spot on 3 March. Two men who later arrived at a south London hospital with stab wounds were arrested on suspicion of murder when police were called, but one of them escaped after attacking officers and NHS staff, forcing his way out of the building. E.Standard, 31 Mar; BBC News, 1 Apr 2021.

In some densely populated areas of China there is a ban on traditional burials and cremation is enforced, but there remains a strong belief that burial is the only way to bring peace to the dead, who will then protect their descendants. To try to get round this ban a family in Shanwei, in Guangdong province, paid the equivalent of nearly £12,000 to a man identified only by his surname, Huang, to obtain a substitute body that could be cremated. They would then bury their deceased relative in secret using traditional rites. Rather than find an existing corpse to fulfil the deal, Huang instead lured Lin Shoren, 36, a man with Down’s Syndrome, into his car, where he plied him with alcohol and murdered him. He nailed Shoren’s corpse into a coffin and passed it on to the family, who had him cremated. The crime was not uncovered until two years after Lin Shoren had been reported missing. Huang was handed a suspended death sentence, but as the authorities were satisfied that the family were not aware that their substitute corpse was someone killed to order, they avoided prison and were convicted of “insulting a corpse”. BBC News, D.Telegraph, 14 April 2021.

Yasir Hussain, 10, died after falling and banging his head during a playground football game at Leigh Primary School, Birmingham. An inquest heard that his oversized trainers “may have been a factor leading to his fall”. First aiders at the school called for an ambulance, but it failed to turn up. The call handler for West Midlands Ambulance Service apologised, explaining the service was “extremely busy” that day due to the pandemic. The schoolboy was taken home by his mother after his condition apparently improved. Yasir was given paracetamol after complaining of head pains. Five-and-a-half hours later, his condition deteriorated, and he was taken to Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The young Aston Villa fan, who had dreamt of becoming a professional footballer, died five days later on 12 November 2020. First-aider Zahira Mabine, stationed in the playground at the time of the incident, said it was unclear why the schoolboy’s trainers were so big, telling the inquest that she had mentioned this to Yasir’s mother and grandmother when they arrived at the school after being notified of his fall. “I said it’s really important he has the correct shoe size because they could cause him to have a fall.” D.Mail, 13 Apr 2021.

Buddhist monk Thammakorn Wangpreecha, 68, cut off his own head with a homemade guillotine on his birthday. His body was found with its head severed in the Wat Phu Hin temple in the Nong Bua Lamphu province of Thailand alongside a marble slab inscribed with his plans. These explained that he had been planning the ritual for five years in the belief that the sacrifice would result in him being reincarnated as a higher spiritual being in the next life. A statue of the Buddha was positioned so that it would appear to be holding his head, once severed. After his post-mortem, 300 of the monk’s followers arrived at the temple for his funeral rites, placing his body in a coffin and his head in a separate casket before taking his remains out into a forest to be burned. One of them said: “He fulfilled his goal and achieved enlightenment.” The National Office of Buddhism in Thailand, though, emphasised that the practice was not encouraged and asked people to give money or free captive birds as a sacrifice instead. Metro, 20 April; D. Mail 20 April; , 22 April 2021.

Children’s author James Nash, 42, was shot with a home-made shotgun then beaten to death in his garden in Hampshire by his neighbour Alex Sartain, 34. Sartain believed Nash spied on him for the Russian President Vladimir Putin and also that the CIA, MI6 and NASA were after him. After the killing, Sartain fled on a motorbike and was himself killed when he crashed while being chased by police. Sun 20 April 2021.