STRANGE DEATHS
UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
A 25-year-old man in Houston, Texas, died while dancing on top of a moving 18-wheeler truck. Footage recorded by another driver shows the man standing on the roof of the truck gyrating his hips and waving his arms as it travels down the Eastex Freeway in Houston. He dodges one overpass, then gets up to continue dancing but fails to spot the Tuan Street Bridge, which he struck at speed, sending him crashing to the tarmac. “I saw the bloody chunks on the ground. I saw the contorted body and broken neck and arm,” said witness Crystal Davis. “It was a horrible way to begin a day.” metro. co.uk, 16 Nov 2022.
When Hull University student Harry Bolton, 19, did not answer his door to housemates or respond to texts, they called site security to break into his room, where they found him dead inside with a large, infected wound on his back. The previous day Bolton had told friends that a spider had bitten him on the back and that he was feeling unwell, so they advised him to seek medical attention. He went to Hull Royal Infirmary, where it was noted that he had a high temperature and elevated heart rate. A blood test found nothing to cause concern, so he discharged himself, agreeing to return the next day for a check-up, but died in the night. At the inquest into Bolton’s death, coroner Paul Marks recorded that his death was caused by sepsis, due to an acute chest infection, resulting from an infected wound on his back. Deaths from spider bites are almost unknown in the UK, with the only other known death from spider bite in the last 30 years occurring in 2014, when Pat Gough-Irwin, 60, died after being bitten by a false widow spider at her home in Hampshire (for more on false widows, see FT337:22, 347:80). telegraph. co.uk, 2 Dec 2022.
Festive sport in India has been more than usually lethal in recent weeks. During a festival in Andhra Pradesh, two men have been stabbed to death by chickens. Cockfights are a traditional pastime there, particularly during the Sankranti festival, and while the most extreme version of the sport, involving attaching long blades to the cock’s feet, has been banned in India since 2018, many still flout the law, sometimes with lethal consequences. In Kakinada,
Gande Suryapraksha Rao was attaching blades to his prize cockerel ahead of a bout when something startled the bird and it flew up, causing the blade to cut Rao’s leg, severing the femoral artery so that he bled to death despite being rushed to hospital. At another event in East Godavari, a spectator at a cockfight was struck on the hand with a blade, resulting in severe bleeding. He, too, died before reaching hospital. Elsewhere, in Gujarat, six people died from kite strings cutting their throats during the annual Uttarayan festival. This takes place in mid-January and marks the beginning of the end of winter. It involves competitive kite flying, with participants using strings crusted with fragments of glass to sever other people’s kite strings. Three children died; two girls, both aged two, one who was riding with her father on a bike when a string caught her throat, and a seven-year-old boy, as well as three men in Vadodara, Kutch and Gandhinagar. In addition to the deaths, 30 people sustained serious cuts and 46 were injured falling from buildings while flying kites during the two-day festival. dailymail.co.uk, standard.co.uk, 18 Jan 2023.
In Japan, the end of Covid restrictions has meant the return of bonenkai (“forget the year”) parties – alcoholfuelled binges at which office workers get together to mark the end of the year. Dreaded by many due to the pressure to both get drunk and remain polite in the presence of their bosses, the revived parties have also caused concern to authorities due to the rise in “road sleeping” deaths. These occur when revellers keel over in the middle of the road, go to sleep, and are subsequently struck by vehicles. This seems to be a particular problem in Tokyo, where road sleeping deaths rose from seven in 2021 to 13 in 2022, and Japanese authorities feared that the end of year festivities would further increase the toll. As a result, they commissioned a public information film from the popular comedy duo Cowcow to be shown on monitors in taxis to warn people of the risks of road sleeping and issued advice to organisations representing the taxi and trucking industries asking their drivers to slow down and be alert for road sleepers. theguardian.com, 14 Dec 2022.