Strange deathS
UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
Oliver Park, a 51-year-old German tourist, slipped to his death in the mountaintop Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes on 29 June 2016. He had ignored a security cordon and went up to a dangerous cliff edge where he asked another visitor to take a picture of him as he jumped in the air. He lost his balance and fell 130ft (40m) to his death. It took rescue workers 90 minutes to reach him. Only the day before, a South Korean tourist died while taking a selfie on the Gocta waterfall in Peru’s northern Amazonian region. He was believed to have fallen 1,600ft (488m). Times, 2 July 2016.
An unnamed 16-year-old in South India was killed while trying to take a selfie on 30 January 2016. He walked onto railway tracks in Chennai in the hope of getting a good shot of an oncoming passenger train thundering towards him in the background, but he failed to move off the tracks in time. D.Telegraph, 2 Feb 2016.
Ramandeep Singh, 15, died on 29 April 2016 after accidentally shooting himself in the head while posing for a selfie with his father’s gun. He pulled the trigger instead of pushing the shutter release button. He was taken to hospital in the Punjab, but died two days later. D.Telegraph, 2 May 2016.
Carmen Greenway, 41, died following a bicycle crash moments after she took a smiling selfie on the way home from a pub dinner celebrating her mother’s birthday on 18 August. The mother of two is believed to have had one hand on the bike as she hit a bumpy patch of road and lost control. As she wasn’t wearing a helmet, she fractured her skull and died six days later in hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. Her mother was riding behind her when she fell, just 100 yards from her family home in Isleworth, west London. D.Telegraph, 5 Oct 2016.
The number of people who die each year taking selfies is on the rise: 15 in 2014, 39 in 2015 and 73 in the first eight months of 2016. The first report (by a reputable news source) of a selfie-taker dying while snapping a picture was in March 2014. Since then (up to midNovember 2016), there had been 127 around the world – 76 in India, nine in Pakistan, eight in the US and six in Russia. The most likely cause of death was falling from a great height, with people going to extreme lengths to take a selfie on cliffs or the top of buildings to impress followers on social media. Instagram users such as Drewsssik built a large following online with photos taken on top of tall structures. He died in 2015 after falling from a building. In India, there are more selfie deaths related to trains, due to the belief that posing on or next to train tracks with one’s best friend is a sign of neverending friendship. BBC News, 17 Nov 2016.
Brain-eating amoebas can enter an unwitting swimmer’s brain via their nose, after which their chances of survival are slim. The organism, Nægleria fowleri, lurks in fresh water, although infections can also result from swimming in hot springs or improperly chlorinated pools. Of the 35 reported cases in the US between 2005 and 2014, only two people survived. Last August, a 19-yearold woman died after being infected in Maryland. After the amoeba enters the body, it heads straight for the brain, where the first areas it destroys are the olfactory regions that we use to smell, and parts of the frontal lobe, crucial for cognition and controlling behaviour. Abdul Mannan at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, suspected the amoeba might be attracted to a chemical called acetylcholine (ACh), which is released in large amounts by cells at the front of the brain. He found that one of the amoeba proteins has a structure similar to the human receptor for ACh. It is this that probably causes the amoebas to head straight for the brain. Metro, 29 Sept 2016.
Experts believe a jogger was killed by seaweed fumes. Jean-René Auffray, 50, was found dead in an estuary at Gouessant in Brittany, apparently poisoned by sea lettuce, common along the Brittany coast and round the Channel Islands, which rots to make hydrogen sulphide. The gas has been linked to the death of wild boars and horses. Auffray’s official cause of death was given as a heart attack, but experts want more tests. Sun, D.Mirror, 13 Jan 2017.
Three people were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after a diabetic grandmother died following Chinese ‘slap treatment’ at a country retreat. Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, was found dead hours after taking part in the “Self-Healing Workshop” at Cleeve House country hotel in Seend, Wiltshire. The treatment is supposed to eradicate illness-causing toxins from the body by hard, reaped slapping, fasting and painful stretching on a bench, a technique known as paida-lajin. Carr-Gomm, who suffered from type 1 diabetes, had a lifelong fear of needles and had briefly stopped taking insulin after undergoing previous workshops. D.Telegraph, 14 Nov 2016.
Italian vet Luciano Ponzetto, 55, received death threats and hate mail after posting on Facebook a snap of himself in Tanzania next to a lion he had killed. While out hunting birds in the hills above Turin in mid-December, he slipped on ice and plunged to his death down a 100ft (30m) ravine in the Colle delle Oche. His body was recovered by helicopter. Sun, 13 Dec; Metro, 14 Dec 2016.
On 28 January, a family was crushed to death by the hundreds of pounds of clothes they had hoarded in their home. The bodies of the married couple, together with their 12-year-old daughter, were found buried under the mountain of material. Investigators believe the floor of their first floor flat in Alicante, Spain, caved in due to the weight. Rescuers aided by firefighters had to remove a massive amount of clothes and other items to uncover the victims. The freak accident happened between 8 and 9am, but the victims were not discovered until 1pm by their older daughter, 18. D.Mail, 30 Jan 2017.