STRANGE DEATHS
UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
In Redmond, Western Australia, police were called after family members found Peter Eades, 77, lying seriously injured in the paddock where he kept his pet kangaroo, a three-year-old male that he had hand-reared from a joey. Police had to shoot the animal as it was preventing the ambulance crew from reaching the injured man. “It is believed the man had been attacked by the kangaroo earlier in the day,” said police spokesperson Ryan Langley. Surprisingly, Eades’s death was only the second death caused by a kangaroo attack in Australia in 100 years, despite regular violent incidents involving ‘roos. The previous death reportedly occurred in 1938, when 38-year-old William Cruickshank died from head injuries after trying to save his dogs from an aggressive kangaroo in New South Wales. theguardian.com, 17 Sept 2022.
Police checking on Glenn Hirsch, 51, after he failed to appear in court on a murder charge, found that he had shot himself. He was on bail for the murder of Zhiwin Yan, a delivery driver for New York's Great Wall Chinese restaurant, the culmination of a sustained reign of terror against the restaurant. The dispute began because Hirsch believed he had not been given enough duck sauce with his order, and before his attack on Yan he had slashed a restaurant worker’s tyres and threatened another employee, saying “I have a gun.” Hirsch’s vendetta culminated when he walked up to Yan in Forest Hills while he was on his delivery scooter, waiting at traffic lights, and shot him several times at close range before fleeing in his car. New York Times, 6 Aug 2022.
When Joan Ita Bergin, 58, started being violently sick on Christmas Day 2021 while suffering from a heavy cold, her son called an ambulance. On admission to hospital, she was found to have low oxygen levels and liver failure and was taken to intensive care, but her condition continued to decline, and she died days later of multiple organ failure. Bergin had admitted to doctors that she had been taking Lemsip cold remedy much more frequently than the recommended maximum dose of one sachet every four to six hours. Each sachet contains 1,000mg of paracetamol and as a result she had given herself what coroner Kate Bissett described as an “unintentional paracetamol overdose” with fatal consequences. Sun, 24 Apr 2022.
After Arvind Mishra, 38, died from the bite of a venomous snake in Bhawanipur, India, family members from across the country travelled to his home village for the funeral. However, it seems that snakes had it in for the Mishra family, with Arvind’s brother Govind, 22, meeting a similar fate almost as soon as he arrived. Police spokesperson Radha Raman reported that Govind “was killed after being bitten by a snake in his sleep. One of the relatives of the family, Chandrashekar Pandey, aged 22, was also bitten by a snake. He was rushed to hospital where his condition remains critical”. While snakes have been used as murder weapons in India (FT414:80), foul play is not suspected in this case. Death by snakebite is common in India, with around 1.2 million people being killed by snakes in the last 20 years. D.Star, 6 Aug 2022.
Summer Butler, 37, ended up in court in Las Vegas facing charges of driving under the influence resulting in death, reckless driving, and being in possession of a controlled substance, after killing another driver in a collision with a car making a U-turn. Arriving at the scene of the accident, police found that Butler was drunk and high on cocaine, noting that “a small baggie containing a white substance fell out of the left side of her bra” as a trauma paramedic attended to her injuries; but later, tests on the victim discovered that he, too, was several times over the legal blood alcohol limit, and had been high on methamphetamine, with substantial amounts of the drug in his system at the time of the collision. theshaderoom.com, 7 Sept 2022.
During Highland Games being held in the grounds of Geldrop Castle in the Netherlands, an athlete slipped during the hammer throwing contest and released the 22lb (9.9kg) projectile prematurely. It soared over a hedge and struck a 65-year-old visitor to the castle gardens on the head, killing him instantly. Highland hammer throwing involves a heavy ball on the end of a pole that the competitor whirls round to build up speed before releasing it towards a target area. A witness said: “We saw the ball go over the hedge and then we heard a woman screaming very loudly. It wasn’t a spectator... so he didn't see the ball coming at all.” dailymail.co.uk, 8 Aug 2022.