STRANGE DEATHS UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

In Barranquilla, Colombia, a fiveyear-old girl died after a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on her in a park. The girl was playing with her older brother in a square in La Colechera Park in the El Silencio district when she tried to hug the 150kg (330lb) statue, but it was not fixed in place and toppled over, trapping her underneath. Emergency services and neighbours freed the girl, but she died of traumatic brain injuries before reaching hospital. Rafael Vaca, a city councillor, said that the figure had been in the park for six months, but that no one knew how it had got there. Metro; newsbeezer.com, 2 June 2021.

Iran Khorramdin, 74, and her husband Akbar, 81, were arrested in Tehran, Iran, for drugging, killing and dismembering their son Babak, 47, a noted film-maker and lecturer, after someone spotted body parts in a bin. Akbar confessed: “It was Friday night when his mother cooked chicken and poisoned it to make him unconscious, but he did not eat that and went to his room and slept, so we put the food in the refrigerator. He woke up the next day and ate that.” They then tied him to a chair, stabbed him, dismembered the body and distributed parts round the city in three suitcases. When arrested they explained that they had killed their son because he was single and having relationships with his students and went on to confess that 10 years earlier they had killed their daughter Arezo because she was a drug addict, and their son-inlaw because he was abusive. In court Akbar said: “I don’t regret what I did with the cooperation of my wife. They were corrupted and I thank God.” Police were looking into whether any other family members have gone missing in suspicious circumstances. guardian.com, 21 May 2021.

Pastor James Sakara of the Zion Church in Chadzia, Zambia, also a renowned traditional healer, decided to prove his credentials as a messenger from God to his followers by personally restaging the resurrection of Christ in the yard outside his church. Prophesying that he would rise from the dead again after three days, he had members of his congregation dig a shallow grave. With his hands tied in front of him and quoting Bible verses, Sakara was lowered into the grave and buried alive. Three days later, he was dug up, and, unsurprisingly, the 22-year-old was found to be dead. Despite strenuous prayer and spiritual rituals aimed at resuscitating him, Sakara remained stubbornly deceased and when it became clear he was going to remain that way, two of the deacons who interred him fled while the third turned himself in to police. Critics suggested that the failure of his resurrection attempt might have been due to Jesus having been already dead when he was buried, whereas Sakara was still alive. D.Mail, 24 Aug; ladbible.com, 25 Aug 2021.

After software engineer John Gerrish, 45, and his partner Ellen Chung, 30, did not return from a hike in Sierra National Forest in northern California with their one-year-old daughter Miju and dog Oski, search teams found all of them dead on the trail in an area of the park known as Devil’s Gulch. With no obvious cause of death, foul play was ruled out. “You come on scene and everyone is deceased. There’s no bullet holes. No bottles of medicine, not one clue. It’s a big mystery,” said County Sheriff Jeremy Briese. Police initially treated it as a hazmat incident but lifted the restrictions a day later, remaining baffled as to what could have killed the family and their dog. County Sheriff's spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said: “We’re not focusing on one specific cause at this point. There's just still so many that we can’t rule out. We’ve looked at lightning strikes in the area. We’ve looked at storms… the weather, animals. We’re looking at the entire area as a whole.” Autopsies on the bodies did not reveal any obvious cause of death, but samples were sent for toxicology analysis, which can take some weeks. After considering potential carbon dioxide leaks from abandoned gold mines, suspicion has fallen on algal blooms in the nearby Merced River as a possible cause. These had previously led to the US Forest Service issuing warnings not to swim in the river or let pets drink from it. Some algæ produce powerful neurotoxins that can kill humans, but normally it requires ingestion of the toxic algæ or contaminated shellfish. Under rare circumstances algal toxins can become airborne and be inhaled, and if the landscape allowed these to concentrate in a hollow, they could have killed the family. Such toxins usually produce detectable nerve damage, though, and that should have shown up at autopsy. BBC News; people.com. 21 Aug 2021.