STRANGE DEATHS

UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

Florida resident Shamaya Lynn left her toddler playing in the background while she took a work Zoom call. During the call the child found an unsecured, fully loaded handgun and fired it. Other people in the meeting heard a noise and saw Lynn fall backwards and not return to the call, so contacted emergency services, who found that she had been shot in the head by the child and killed. E.Standard, 13 Aug 2021.

When Uthra Kumar was bitten in bed by a Russell’s viper in Kerala, India, it was thought to be nothing more than an unfortunate accident. Russell’s vipers are highly venomous snakes common in India and are responsible for many deaths. After being bitten Uthra woke up screaming and her husband Suraj grabbed the snake and threw it out the window. It took Suraj more than two hours to find a hospital, but they were still able to save Uthra’s life with anti-venom, although by that time her leg was swelling and hæmorrhaging, leaving her needing three skin transplants. After treatment, she returned to her parents' house to recuperate. While there, though, she was found dead in bed, having once again been bitten by a venomous snake, this time a cobra.

While being bitten in bed by a venomous snake twice within a short time is extremely unusual, even in India, where 60,000 people a year die of snakebites, it did not cause suspicion until Suraj tried to take control of Uthra’s property, when police were called to investigate her death. They discovered that Suraj had been telling his friends that his wife was “haunted by the curse of a serpent” in her dreams, which told her she was “destined to die of snakebite.” He had also carried out extensive online research into snakes and snakebite deaths, even while Uthra was in hospital being treated for the first bite. It was also discovered that he had clandestinely bought a viper and a spectacled cobra from a local snake catcher (selling snakes is illegal in India) before the attacks on his wife. Suraj eventually confessed that he had first put the viper in his wife’s bed at home, and when that failed to kill her, attempted to do the same with the cobra at her parents’ house. When the cobra refused to bite, as they are lethargic at night, he held it by the hood and forced its fangs into Uthra’s arm, delivering the fatal bite.

The distinctive pattern caused by manually forcing a cobra to bite was key to convicting Suraj, and public prosecutor Mohanraj Gopalakrishnan said that the case was a “milestone in police investigations in India, when prosecutors could decisively prove that an animal was used as a weapon of murder.” Suraj Kumar was found guilty of plotting to kill his wife, take over her property, then marry someone else. He received two life sentences. BBC News, 20 Oct 2021.

Florida man Clifton Anthony Bliss Jr lost his temper when his neighbour’s cat kept entering his property and confronted the neighbour, James Arland Taylor Jr, about it. Unsatisfied with the outcome, Bliss got his gun and said he was going to shoot the cat, but Taylor asked him not to, so Bliss shot Taylor dead instead. local10.com/news, 22 Oct 2021.

In the neighbourhood of San Miguel Dorami in Naucalpan de Juarez, Mexico, an unnamed woman in her early

20s decided to play a prank on her neighbours by dressing as the legendary ghost La Llorona and wailing outside their house. La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is a classic ghost in Latin American folklore, who is said to walk the Earth mourning the two children she drowned after discovering her husband with another woman (see FT351:30-31, 373:49). The woman was being filmed by passers-by on their phones as she stood in the street in full costume crying out, “Ay, mis hijos!” (Oh, my children!), when a spooked local opened fire on the “ghost”, killing her instantly. Metro, 22 Oct 2021.

When Ernest Grusza, 41, turned up at a shop in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, covered in blood, police were called and accompanied him to the nearby flat of his mother, Wiesslawa Mierzejeska, 59, where he held up various body parts, including her head, wrapped in clingfilm. Believing he was Jesus Christ and that his mother was the Devil incarnate, Grusza had murdered her after he heard voices he thought were from God telling him to kill her and dismember her body in order to destroy the Devil. His mother had previously tried to have Grusza sectioned due to concerns over his mental health, and at his trial the judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity and directed that he be held in a secure hospital indefinitely. D.Mail, 10 Nov 2021.