List of unusual deaths in the 21st century

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 21st century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

• 
  Steve Irwin, the "Crocodile Hunter" who was killed by a stingray
• 
  Phillip Hughes, Australian cricketer killed on the pitch
• 
  The Stegosaurus statue inside which a man died

Lists of unusual deaths
Antiquity
Middle Ages	Renaissance	Early modern period
19th century	20th century	21st century
Animal deaths

2000s

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Bernd Brandes		9 March 2001	The 43-year-old engineer was voluntarily slaughtered and eaten by Armin Meiwes following an appointment via the internet. At Brandes' request, Meiwes first severed Brandes' penis and they unsuccessfully tried to eat it. Meiwes taped the entire amputation, killing, conserving, and eating Brandes' meat. Meiwes was eventually arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in prison.[1][2][3]
Unknown man		27 April 2001	An unknown Canadian man in his mid-50s was visiting his mother's house in Vernon, British Columbia to attend his father's funeral when, while cleaning the kitchen, he tripped over the open dishwasher door and was fatally impaled on knives sticking up out of the cutlery tray.[4][5]
Michael Colombini		29 July 2001	The six-year-old died during an MRI scan at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, after an oxygen tank was magnetically pulled into the machine and fractured his skull.[6][7]
Brittanie Cecil		18 March 2002	The 13-year-old died from her injuries at an NHL game after a deflected puck struck her in the left temple. She was the first and only fan fatality in the league's history.[8][9]
Roger Wallace		18 May 2002	The 60-year-old auto parts salesman was flying his 5-foot (1.5 m) wingspan remote-control plane in Tucson, Arizona, when he lost sight of it in the bright sun. It struck him in the chest, killing him.[10][11][better source needed]
Miroslav Kukliš		10 September 2002	The 31-year-old Czech tourist committed suicide by stabbing his chest with a knife during a cave diving trip in the Poganica bay near Split, Croatia. Due to the nature of his death, police initially believed that he was murdered. Though later investigation concluded that after Kukliš became lost in the underwater cave and ran out of oxygen, he stabbed himself to avoid the prolonged pain of death by drowning.[12][13]
Jane McDonald		27 May 2003	While visiting a friend, the 31-year-old slipped and fell onto an open dishwasher, landing on an upright knife. She was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries.[14][15]
Rebecca Longhoffer		16 August 2003	The 39-year-old tourist and mother of four was electrocuted while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard when she stepped on a cast iron plate that covered electrical wiring. The plate had been hidden by a deep rain puddle.[16][17]
Hitoshi Nikaidoh		16 August 2003	The 35-year-old surgical resident from Houston, Texas, was killed after his head was trapped in elevator doors at the hospital where he worked. He was partially decapitated as the elevator ascended, and he also sustained injuries to his ribs and spine.[18][19]
Brian Wells		28 August 2003	The 46-year-old pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed after a collar bomb around his neck exploded as part of a bank robbery scheme.[20][21][22]
Unknown woman		2004	A 45-year-old Taiwanese woman bathed in 40.5% ethanol in an attempt to protect herself from SARS during the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. She lay down in the fluid at 11. p.m. and was found dead at 11 a.m. by her family the next day. Her BAC was 1.35% and she most likely absorbed the alcohol through the skin.[23][24]
Francis Daniel Brohm		2 September 2004	The 23-year-old was hanging out the passenger window of 21-year-old John Hutcherson's car when Hutcherson drove off the road and sideswiped a telephone pole support wire, decapitating him. Hutcherson continued the final 12 miles (19 km) to his Atlanta home, parked in the driveway, and went to bed. A neighbor found Brohm's headless body in the truck the next morning.[25][26]
Kenneth Pinyan		2 July 2005	The 45-year-old Boeing engineer from Seattle, nicknamed Mr. Hands, died from acute peritonitis after his colon was perforated while being anally penetrated by a horse.[27][28]
Chandler Hugh Jackson		6 July 2005	The 12-year-old was playing at the Dogwood Hill golf club in Cunningham, Kentucky, when he fell on his 9-iron club while retrieving an out of bounds ball. The club broke, with a piece of the shaft piercing his aorta through his chest.[29][30]
Steve Irwin		4 September 2006	The 44-year-old Australian wildlife expert and television personality was pierced in the chest by a short-tail stingray's barb while filming in shallow water in the Great Barrier Reef.[31][32][33]
Alexander Litvinenko		23 November 2006	The 44-year-old, a naturalised British citizen, former Russian FSB officer, and defector, was assassinated by poisoning with polonium-210, which caused acute and irreversible radiation sickness.[34][35][36][37] One of just a handful of recorded deaths attributed specifically to polonium exposure,[38] Litvinenko is the only confirmed fatality from malicious polonium poisoning.[39]
Jennifer Strange		12 January 2007	The 28-year-old mother was participating in a contest sponsored by Sacramento-based radio station KDND, called "Hold Your Wee For A Wii", in which contestants had to drink excessive amounts of water without going to the bathroom. She vomited during the contest and returned home with a headache, later dying of water intoxication.[40][41][42]
Humberto Hernandez		21 June 2007	The 24-year-old Oakland, California, resident was struck in the back of the head by an airborne fire hydrant when a passing car struck it, and the water pressure shot it at him with great force.[43][44][45]
Francis Pete Tovey		18 March 2008	The 81-year-old built a device that consisted of a jigsaw power tool attached to a .22 semi-automatic handgun containing four bullets. He then activated it, which fired multiple shots at his head, killing himself. Tovey built the device after downloading suicide plans on the Internet. Tovey, who originated from England and was living in Burleigh Heads, Australia at the time, left a note stating that he was struggling after pressure from relatives to move from his £450,000 home to a retirement home.[46][47][48]
Judy Kay Zagorski		20 March 2008	The 57-year-old from Pigeon, Michigan, died of blunt force craniocerebral trauma when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leaped out of the water and knocked her over off the coast of Marathon Key, Florida. The ray also died.[49][50]
Adelir Antônio de Carli		21 April 2008	The 41-year-old Brazilian Catholic priest and sky diver undertook a cluster balloon flight to raise funds for charity. During the flight, contact was lost and de Carli disappeared. The lower part of his body was found floating in the sea eleven weeks later on 4 July.[51][52]
Isaiah Otieno		13 May 2008	The student from Cranbrook, British Columbia, was struck and killed by a helicopter that plunged into a residential street he was walking in. The pilot and two other passengers of the helicopter were also instantly killed.[53][54]
Unknown woman		7 October 2008	A 43-year-old Irish woman died of an allergic reaction after having sex with a German Shepherd. Its owner, Seán McDonnell, and the woman met in an Internet chat room for bestiality. McDonnell was prosecuted and added to a sex offender list. The dog was later put down.[55][56]
Jeff Twaddle		27 March 2009	The 54-year-old charter boat deckhand from Huntington Beach, California, choked to death on a bait fish he had placed in his mouth to amuse a group of elementary school students on a fishing trip off Long Beach.[57][58]
Diane Durre		3 April 2009	The 49-year-old was killed in North Platte, Nebraska, by a falling Taco Bell sign. The sign was knocked over by high winds, and landed on a pickup truck, killing her and injuring her husband, Mark.[59][60]
Mark Fidrych		13 April 2009	The 54-year-old former Major League Baseball pitcher of the Detroit Tigers died while working underneath his dump truck. His clothes became entangled with the power take-off drive shaft, suffocating him.[61][62]
David Carradine		3 June 2009	The 72-year-old American actor was found dead in a closet at the Nai Lert Park Hotel in Bangkok. Carradine's neck and genitals were bound and connected by a cord. His death was ruled a case of autoerotic asphyxiation rather than suicide.[63][64][65][66][67]
Taylor Mitchell		28 October 2009	The 19-year-old Canadian folk singer was killed by a pair of coyotes while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in the only known fatal coyote attack on an adult.[68][69][70]

2010s

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe		3 March 2010	The 42-year-old was struck in the head by a piece of a metal pipe flung by a tractor-pulled lawnmower as she walked to work in Townsville, Australia.[71][72]
Gareth Williams		16 August 2010	The 31-year-old Welsh mathematician and GCHQ analyst was found dead and naked in a bag that had been padlocked from the outside, in the bath of his home in Central London.[73] The inquest found his death was likely criminal, although a Metropolitan Police investigation later found that it was likely an accident.[74]
The 20 passengers and crew of a Filair Let L-410		25 August 2010	20 passengers and crew of a Let L-410 Turbolet were killed in a crash resulting from an escaped crocodile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the sole survivor of the crash, the animal was smuggled aboard by a passenger but escaped mid-flight. Panicked passengers surged forward, unbalancing the plane and causing a loss of control.[75] The crocodile survived the crash, but was promptly killed by a blow from a machete.[76]
Mike Edwards		3 September 2010	The 62-year-old cellist and founding member of the band Electric Light Orchestra died when a large, round bale of hay rolled down a hill and collided with the van he was driving in Totnes, England.[77][78]
Jimi Heselden		26 September 2010	The 62-year-old owner of Segway Inc. died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System off a cliff in Thorp Arch, England.[79][80][81] The coroner came to the conclusion that Heselden had likely fallen from the cliff with the Segway after "getting into difficulty" reversing to allow a man walking his dog to pass him.[82][failed verification]
Jose Luis Ochoa		30 January 2011	The 35-year-old died after being stabbed in the leg at an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California, by a bird with a knife-like spur strapped to its leg.[83][84]
Xavier Tondo		23 May 2011	The 32-year-old Spanish road racing cyclist was crushed to death between a garage door and his car as he prepared to leave his home in the Province of Granada, Spain, for a training ride in preparation for the 2011 Tour de France.[85][86]
Unnamed man and woman		6 June 2011	Two unnamed people were killed in an accident on a rural Quebec road when a "flying bear" collided with their SUV. The 200-kilogram (440 lb) black bear was sent airborne by a car in front of the SUV after it had stepped into the path of traffic on Highway 148. The bear passed through the windshield, hitting the driver and the passenger sitting behind her before passing through the rear window. The driver's boyfriend was in the front passenger seat and received injuries to his upper body which were described as "not life-threatening". The bear also died.[87][88]
Erica Marshall		10 February 2012	The 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber kicked the wall, releasing a spark from its horseshoe, causing a fire and explosion. The horse was also killed and another worker was seriously injured.[89][90]
Anthony Hensley		14 April 2012	The 37-year-old was killed by a swan while kayaking across a pond at a residential complex in Des Plaines, Illinois. After getting too close to the bird's nest, the swan attacked him, threw him out of the kayak and prevented him from surfacing; he ultimately drowned.[91][92]
Elizabeth Watkins		6 May 2012	The 24-year-old Australian field hockey player died in Perth after a deflected ball struck her on the head.[93][94]
Dieter Strack		27 August 2012	The 74-year-old German official was on the field at a youth athletic competition in Düsseldorf to measure a javelin throw when the javelin speared him in the throat. He died in hospital the following day.[95][96]
Kendrick Johnson		10 January 2013	The 17-year-old was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium in Valdosta, Georgia. Police originally concluded he had climbed in it to retrieve a shoe and became trapped, but the case was later reopened as a possible homicide.[97][98][99][100] The homicide case was dismissed, and Kendrick's parents were accused of fabricating evidence. In 2014, they were ordered to pay more than US$292,000 in legal fees.[101] The case was again reopened in 2021, but closed again in January 2022, with the Lowndes County Sheriff finding his death to be an accident when re-reviewing some 17 boxes of evidence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's findings.[102][103]
James Campbell		14 January 2013	The 68-year-old man from Cantonment, Florida had left his 1995 Chevrolet Van to open a gate from his driveway when his dog stepped on the van's gas pedal and ran him over.[104][105]
Elisa Lam		February 2013	The 21-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was missing for several weeks before being found dead in a large water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, after guests complained about low pressure and foul smell of the water.[106][107]
Unknown man		2013	An unnamed 60-year-old Belarusian fisherman bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab to have his picture taken with it.[108][109]
João Maria de Souza		2013	The 45-year-old was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and his wife (who was in the bed next to him) were unharmed.[110][111]
Noah Barthe, Connor Barthe		5 August 2013	The brothers, aged 4 and 6, respectively, were killed by an African rock python during a sleepover at their friend's apartment in New Brunswick, Canada. The snake had escaped from its inadequate enclosure and moved through ducts that were easily accessible to the reptile, where the snake then fell through the ceiling where the boys slept 3 metres (9.8 ft) away. Though the snake suffocated them, it did not attempt to eat them. However, an African rock python would not constrict unless it planned on eating; therefore, it is likely that the owners of the python also failed to feed their pet. The python was euthanized.[112][113]
Roman Pirozek Jr.		5 September 2013	The 19-year-old model airplane enthusiast was partially decapitated by the blade of his radio-controlled helicopter while performing aerobatic maneuvers in Calvert Vaux Park in Brooklyn, New York.[114][115]
Denver Lee St. Clair		21 December 2013	The 58-year-old was asphyxiated by an "atomic wedgie" administered by his stepson, Brad Davis, during a fight in Oklahoma. After he had been knocked unconscious, the elastic band from his torn underwear was pulled over his head and stretched around his neck, strangling him. Davis was sentenced to 30 years in prison.[116][117]
J.R.N.		18 January 2014	A 52-year-old Brazilian man, identified only as J.R.N., attempted to commit bestiality with a sow in Tapurah, Mato Grosso, but was attacked by the animals and wounded in the genitals. He died from cardiac arrest. His arms and face were also mutilated by the animals. Initially police believed that the man had been murdered and disposed of at the farm, but this was disproven as numerous pieces of evidence showed that the man had drunk alcohol, used a condom and had been wearing only underwear. The man had worked at the farm for two years.[118][119][120]
Grant Adams		9 June 2014	The 17-year-old had just woken up when he tripped on a wire and fell into a free-standing tanning bed in his bedroom on the morning of June 8, 2014. One of the glass tubes of the bed broke, piercing Grant's neck in two places. He was airlifted from his house in South Shields to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, where he died the next day.[121][122]
Heval Yıldırım		3 October 2014	The 13-year-old from Turkey was killed when a sacrificial goat bought for Eid al-Adha jumped off the roof, over a protective fence, and fell onto him. His father had placed it on the roof of the building where he lived because he could not find another suitable place to keep it.[123][124]
Peter Biaksangzuala		19 October 2014	The 23-year-old Indian football player from Mizoram state died after sustaining spinal cord injuries while awkwardly landing a somersault, celebrating a goal.[125][126]
Christophe de Margerie		20 October 2014	The French oil executive was killed when his corporate jet collided during take-off with an airport snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver in Moscow.[127][128]
Gary Anderson		3 November 2014	The 58-year-old from Somerdale, New Jersey, was delivering drywall to a construction site and leaned his head into the car of a co-worker while having a conversation. As he pulled his head out, a worker accidentally dropped a 1-pound (0.45 kg) tape measure which plummeted 50 stories, or approximately 500 feet (150 m), when it ricocheted off a piece of metal 10 feet (3 m) off the ground and smashed into Anderson's head. He was rushed to Jersey City Medical Center where he suffered cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 9:52 a.m. Hard hats were mandatory at the site, and it is unclear why Anderson was not wearing one when he was killed.[129][130]
Phillip Hughes		27 November 2014	The 25-year-old Australian Test and ODI cricketer was killed by a bouncer striking his neck during a cricket match, causing a vertebral artery dissection.[131][132]
Joshua Harrison-Jones		7 January 2015	The 16-year-old from Stretford, Greater Manchester, died when his neck became trapped between his exercise bench and a onesie he was using as a resistance band.[133][134][135]
Maxee		28 February 2015	The member of American R&B group Brownstone died after falling backward while holding a wine glass. During the fall, the glass shattered on the ground behind her head, and the shards pierced her neck, causing profuse bleeding.[136][137][138]
Stephen Woytack		30 March 2015	The 74-year-old was decorating his family's grave plot at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Throop, Pennsylvania, for Easter with his wife when the tombstone of his mother-in-law toppled over, pinning him underneath and crushing him to death. The stone had supposedly been dislodged when the previously frozen ground was thawed by the early spring temperatures. Woytack was buried in a plot directly in front of the tombstone that killed him.[139][140]
Randy Llanes		29 May 2015	The 47-year-old fisherman from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, was killed by a swordfish. He had harpooned the fish and jumped into the water to retrieve it, but the swordfish impaled him in the chest.[141][142]
Chelsea Ake-Salvacion		19 October 2015	The 24-year-old beauty salon employee in Henderson, Nevada, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.[143][144]
Tom Wilson		9 December 2015	The 22-year-old British field hockey player died after being struck in the head with a stick during a practice match in Loughton, Essex, and suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.[145][146][147]
Ravi Subramanian		16 December 2015	The 54-year-old Air India technician was sucked into an aircraft's jet engine when it was started prematurely by the plane's co-pilot.[148][149][150]
V. Kamaraj		2016	The 40-year-old Indian bus driver was claimed by local newspapers to have been killed by a meteorite which left a two-foot (60 cm) crater, although officials from NASA oppose that view, saying that the most likely explanation was a land-based explosion. According to a preliminary report by the National College Instrumentation Facility (NCIF) in Trichy, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) study on the evidence of the samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore, from where the blast occurred, showed the "presence of carbonaceous chondrites".[151][152][verification needed][153][154][verification needed]
Irma Bule		4 April 2016	The 29-year-old Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.[155][156]
Lottie Michelle Belk		6 June 2016	The 55-year-old was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind in Virginia Beach, Virginia.[157] Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).[158]
Lane Graves		14 June 2016	The 2-year-old boy from Nebraska was on vacation and playing on the beach at Seven Seas Lagoon around 9 p.m. at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, just outside of Orlando, Florida. While he was playing, an alligator approached and dragged him under the water. Graves's body was found nearby the next day, intact and apparently drowned.[159][160][161]
Anton Yelchin		19 June 2016	The 27-year-old American actor, known for portraying Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movie series, was found pinned between his car and a brick wall. His driveway was on an incline and his car was found running and in neutral.[67][162][163] The manufacturer had recalled the car make in April 2016, for concerns about its gearshift design that could cause rollaway incidents, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin's death.[164]
John William Ashe		22 June 2016	The 61-year-old Antiguan diplomat and politician, a former President of the United Nations General Assembly who was awaiting trial on bribery charges, died when a barbell fell on his neck at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, causing traumatic asphyxia and laryngeal fractures.[165][166]
Kristopher Moules and Timothy Gilliam Jr.		18 July 2016	Moules, a 25-year-old correctional officer, and Gilliam, a 27-year-old out-of-county inmate being housed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, fell to their deaths after an altercation between them caused them to slam into the exterior of the fifth-floor elevator doors. Despite the elevator having its up-to-date working credentials, the door popped open on impact, causing the men to fall five flights down the shaft to their deaths. The county declared Moules' death a homicide and declared Gilliam's an accident.[167][168]
Unknown girl		26 July 2016	A 7-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo in Rabat, Morocco.[169][170]
Caleb Schwab		7 August 2016	The 10-year-old was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide at Schlitterbahn Kansas City.[171][172]
Julio Macías González		26 August 2016	The 17-year-old from Mexico City died from a cerebrovascular accident caused by embolus formed on a neck hickey.[173][174]
Ten people		21 November 2016	A powerful southerly change in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who died from respiratory failure.[175] This was due to a stark 60-kilometre-per-hour (37 mph) wind that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks small enough to enter people's lungs.[176]
Kyle Thomson		26 December 2016	The 22-year-old Iowa State University student was bench-pressing about 315 pounds (143 kg) at a gym in Ankeny, Iowa, when the barbell slipped from his hands, crushing his neck. Thomson had spotters for the lift.[177][178][179]
Akbar Salubiro		March 2017	The 25-year-old was killed and swallowed by a reticulated python in West Sulawesi, Indonesia, in the first fully confirmed case of a snake swallowing an adult human.[180]
Charlie Holt		14 April 2017	The 5-year-old was killed at the Sun Dial, a rotating restaurant at the top of Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, when his head was caught in a small space between the rotating and non-rotating sections.[181][182][183]
Robert Dreyer		10 May 2017	The Melbourne, Florida resident drowned on his 89th birthday in Viera after he crashed his 2016 Mercedes-Benz C300 into a fire hydrant and was then swallowed by the sinkhole created by the broken water line which had fed the hydrant.[184][185]
Theunis Botha		19 May 2017	The 51-year-old South African hunter died while leading a hunt in Zimbabwe. After Botha opened fire on three elephants who were charging his hunting party, a fourth elephant picked Botha up with her trunk. Another hunter fatally shot the elephant, which fell on Botha, crushing him to death.[186][187][188]
Debra Bedard		2 June 2017	The 58-year-old died after falling from a golf cart onto shards of wine glasses that had broken in her hands in Calaveras County, California.[189][190]
Rebecca Burger		18 June 2017	The 33-year-old French fitness blogger and model died after a whipped-cream charger exploded and struck her in the chest. The injury caused her to go into cardiac arrest as a result of commotio cordis.[191][192]
Karanbir Cheema		9 July 2017	The 13-year-old from London, England, died in the hospital days after having a severe allergic reaction to a piece of cheese thrown at him by a classmate. Cheema was severely allergic to wheat, gluten, all dairy products, eggs and all nuts.[193][194]
Jasmine Beever		7 September 2017	The 16-year-old from Skegness, England, died of peritonitis brought about by Rapunzel syndrome. She had a long-time habit of chewing and swallowing her own hair (trichophagia) which formed a hairball in her stomach, leading to an infection in her abdomen damaging her vital organs.[195][196]
Elizabeth Isherwood		September 2017	The 60-year-old from Wolverhampton, England, walked naked into an airing cupboard at the villa at Pennal she was renting and shut the door. When she tried to leave, part of the door handle broke off in her hand. She dug into the wall in an attempt to escape, but struck and burst a pipe, which sprayed water into the cupboard and caused her eventual death by hypothermia. She was found several days later.[197][198][199]
Raildo Matias Santos		22 October 2017	The 49-year-old drowned in a bucket of water in Jaguaquara, Brazil. Santos, who was intoxicated, attempted to fetch a 20-litre (4.4 imp gal; 5.3 US gal) bucket of water, tripped, and fell in a kneeling position. He was epileptic.[200][201]
Hidr Korkmaz		12 November 2017	The 42-year-old Turkish-Dutch drug dealer and informant died when he threw his fishhook into an electrical cable while fishing somewhere in Eastern Europe. Though he was a witness in the case against Dutch criminal Willem Holleeder, he was not considered a crucial asset by authorities, who treated his death as an accident.[202][203]
Ateef Rafiq		16 March 2018	The 24-year-old died from cardiac arrest in a movie theater in Birmingham, England, while looking for his dropped mobile phone. His head became wedged under the electronic footrest of a seat.[204][205]
Elaine Herzberg		18 March 2018	The 49-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, as she crossed the road, in what was reported to be the first death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving car on public roads. In response to the fatal accident, Uber suspended self-driving car tests in all U.S. cities.[206][207]
Kyle Plush		10 April 2018	The 16-year-old died from asphyxia after becoming trapped in his Honda Odyssey, which was in his school's parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio. Attempting to reach his tennis equipment, he leaned over the third row of seats into the trunk. When the seats "squashed his chest", he became pinned and later died. During the incident, he called 9–1–1 twice, by using his smartphone's voice assistant. Responding to the calls, the police were not able to find him; he was eventually discovered dead in the vehicle by his father about six hours later.[208][209]
Jennifer Riordan		17 April 2018	The 43-year-old bank executive and businesswoman aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 died after debris from an engine failure destroyed a window near her seat and she was partially blown out through it.[210][211]
Hildegard Whiting		27 July 2018	The 77-year-old died of asphyxiation from the carbon dioxide vapors produced by four dry ice coolers in a Dippin' Dots delivery car. The deliveryman's wife had borrowed the car to take Whiting home.[212][213]
Richard Russell		10 August 2018	The 29-year-old stole a Bombardier Q400 owned by Horizon Air and operating for Alaska Airlines from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. After an unauthorized takeoff, he flew the plane for just over an hour and performed aerial maneuvers including a barrel roll before intentionally crashing on Ketron Island, Washington, killing himself. No one else was injured.[214][215][216]
Sam Ballard		2 November 2018	The 28-year-old from Sydney died from angiostrongyliasis after eating a garden slug as a dare eight years earlier.[217][218][219]
Unknown man		January 2019	A 54-year-old construction worker from Massachusetts died after eating a bag and a half of black liquorice every day for a few weeks, which caused such low potassium levels in his body that his heart stopped.[220][221]
Salvatore Disi		10 January 2019	The 62-year-old was decapitated while using a power cart to jump start a helicopter in Hernando County, Florida. Its unexpected up-and-down motion caused the rotor blades to strike him.[222][223]
Margaret Maurer		5 March 2019	The 21-year-old Tulane University fourth-year student from Forest Lake, Minnesota, died at a highway rest stop in Mississippi when she was struck by a pair of tires that came loose from a passing tractor-trailer.[224][225]
Julian Nott		26 March 2019	The 74-year-old British-American balloonist was mortally injured after landing safely near Warner Springs, California, at the end of a test flight of an experimental high-altitude balloon. After Nott and his passenger reentered the balloon's gondola, it rolled down a steep ravine.[226][227]
Patrick McGuire		April 2019	The 67-year-old American tourist died from positional asphyxia in Scotland when a 72-kilogram (159 lb) metal garden bench he was sitting on toppled backward, pinning him against a wall which had knocked him unconscious. It was later found that such benches had a risk of sinking into the grass and there were no appropriate checks to provide a stable hard surface for the benches.[228][229]
Darren Hickey		5 April 2019	The 51-year-old wedding planner from Horwich, England, died after eating a scalding-hot fishcake at a wedding. The cake had burned his throat, restricting his ability to breathe. The pathologist who performed the autopsy called the case "extremely rare" and likened it to those of victims who have inhaled smoke during house fires.[230][231] Hickey had received a set of false teeth following a previous event.[232]
Marvin Hajos		12 April 2019	The 75-year-old exotic animal collector living at a farm near Alachua, Florida, was attacked and killed by his recently purchased pet cassowary. The large bird repeatedly kicked the man, which punctured his skin and severed the brachial artery in his arm. Hajos was declared dead by the time paramedics arrived at the scene, and the cassowary was auctioned off to a different owner.[233][234]
Paul McDonald		17 April 2019	The 47-year-old was attacked and killed by a pet deer, said to be an elk, on his property in north-east Victoria, Australia.[235][236]
Joemar Jungco		22 June 2019	The 18-year-old worker at a meat processing facility in Iloilo City, Philippines, died after half his body from the head down to the waist was pulled into a meat grinder.[237][238]
Yulia Sharko		8 September 2019	The 21-year-old from Žabinka, Belarus, was celebrating her birthday with friends when she tried to pull her two-year-old daughter out through the window of her car. Her daughter activated the window control button, closing the window and strangling Sharko.[239][240]

2020s

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Yuri Alferov, Natalya Monakova, and Valentin Didenko		28 February 2020	Pharmacist blogger Yekaterina Didenko was celebrating her 29th birthday at the sauna complex in Moscow, Russia. Her husband Valentin brought 25 kilograms of dry ice, which was dumped into an indoor swimming pool, releasing a layer of carbon dioxide fog. Several party-goers jumped into the water and started to lose consciousness. Two of them drowned, Valentin died in intensive care several hours later.[241][242][243]
Christian Bolok		26 October 2020	The 38-year-old lieutenant, who was the police chief of San Jose, Northern Samar, Philippines, died during a raid to shut down a cockfight, which the government had banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was trying to grab a cockfighting rooster when the razor-sharp metal blade attached to the rooster's leg to kill its opponent cut a gaping hole in his leg and sliced his femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death.[244][245]
Luke Ramone Harper		2 April 2021	The 8-year-old from Ringsend, Dublin, died after inhaling helium from a balloon that he placed over his head. The balloon had been bought for his birthday a week prior.[246][247]
Amy Carlson		April 2021	The corpse of the 45-year-old leader of Love Has Won was discovered by police on 28 April 2021, with estimates placing her death c. 16 April 2021. Her remains were mummified and wrapped in a sleeping bag, decorated with Christmas lights; her eyes were missing, and her eye sockets had been decorated with glitter. An autopsy determined that she died of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion.[248][249][250]
Unknown man		May 2021	The body of a 39-year-old man was found wedged inside the hind leg of a papier-mâché statue of a Stegosaurus in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Catalonia, Spain. Initial police reports did not suspect foul play. A police representative hypothesised that the individual may have crawled inside headfirst to retrieve a lost mobile phone before his leg became stuck, trapping him inside. Firefighters had to cut the statue apart to extract the body; police observers believed that he may have been trapped in there for "a couple of days". Local media claimed that the family of the victim had reported him missing only hours prior to the discovery. The body was discovered when a man and his son noticed an unusual smell from the statue, and saw the body through a crack in the statue.[251][252]
Unknown man		30 October 2021	A 30-year-old man was fishing with two friends at a lake in Brasilândia de Minas, Brazil, when the group was attacked by bees. He and his friends jumped into the lake to escape the bees, but the man drowned and was partially eaten by piranhas; his friends survived.[253][254]
Teddy Balkind		6 January 2022	The 16-year-old high school student for St. Luke's School, Connecticut, died after suffering an injury to his neck during a junior varsity ice hockey game. He fell during a game and was accidentally hit by another player, who was unable to stop in time. The other player's skate blade cut Balkind's neck, and he died following an emergency operation.[255][256][verification needed][257]
Dolores Olive Boschert		24 May 2022	The 23-year-old paramedic was exercising alone on a Smith machine at a Planet Fitness gymnasium in St. Charles, Missouri, when she was pinned by a barbell due to unknown circumstances. Another patron found her 30 minutes later and she was pronounced dead at the scene.[258][259]
Maya Murmu		June 2022	The 68-year-old from Odisha, India was trampled to death by an elephant. Later, at her funeral, what may have been the same elephant came back and attacked her corpse by picking up her body and throwing her in the air.[260][261]
Klil Kimhi		21 July 2022	The 32-year-old fell to his death when a sinkhole opened under a swimming pool he was in at a house party in Karmi Yosef, Israel.[262][263]
Anne Heche		11 August 2022	On August 5, 2022, while driving in Mar Vista, Los Angeles, the 53-year-old American actress crashed her Mini Cooper three times in close succession. The car crashed into a wall in an apartment complex parking area and into a Jaguar before embedding itself in a two-story house, which caught fire, trapping Heche in her burning car for 45 minutes. After being rescued, Heche sat up on her stretcher and struggled with firefighters, but then lost consciousness. Heche was declared brain dead on August 11 but was kept on life support until August 14 to preserve her organs for donation.[67][264][265][266][267]
Joseph Smith		21 January 2023	The 30-year-old man was shot and killed by his dog after the animal stepped on a loaded rifle in the back seat of his pickup truck, causing the gun to fire through the front passenger seat and hit him in the back near Geuda Springs, Kansas. The driver of the truck, who was sitting next to Smith at the time of the accident, was unharmed.[268][269][270]
Barry Griffiths		June 2023	The 57-year-old Welsh man, who had suffered a stroke that reduced the mobility of one of his arms, accidentally stabbed himself in the stomach while attempting to separate frozen burgers with a knife. Atherosclerosis was also a contributing factor in Griffiths' death. Police did not discover Griffiths' body in his apartment until over a week after he died.[271][272]
Mikala Jones		9 July 2023	The 44-year-old was killed in a surfing accident in North Sipora, Indonesia, after the fin of his surfboard severed his femoral artery.[273][274]
Justyn Vicky		17 July 2023	On July 15, 2023, the 33-year-old Indonesian bodybuilder and influencer was squatting over 180 kilograms (400 lb) at a Bali gym, assisted by a spotter, when the weight snapped his head forward, breaking his neck. Vicky died in the hospital 2 days later.[275][276][277]
Giacomo Chiapparini		6 August 2023	The 74-year-old Italian was crushed under thousands of Grana Padano cheese wheels, each wheel weighing approximately 40 kilograms (88 lb), after one of the shelves in his warehouse collapsed.[278][279]
Adam Johnson		28 October 2023	The 29-year-old member of the Nottingham Panthers professional ice hockey team died after his neck was cut by a skate during a game between the Panthers and the Sheffield Steelers.[280][281]
Sanjay Shah and Raju Datla		20 January 2024	The 55-year-old CEO of Vistex was celebrating his company's 25th anniversary at a movie studio stage in India. As part of the celebration, Shah and company president Raju Datla were being lowered from the ceiling to the stage in a cage or basket, when a cable broke and both men fell 20 feet (6.1 m), killing Shah and leaving Datla in critical condition.[282][283] Datla died of his injuries six months later.[284]
Lucy Morgan		5 June 2024	The 6-year-old girl was with her family on vacation in Limerick, Maine, on 1 June when, while playing badminton with her family, her brother's aluminium racket shaft broke and pierced her in the skull. She was taken to the hospital where she died from her injuries four days later.[285][286]
Giulia Manfrini		18 October 2024	The 36-year-old Italian surfer died while surfing near the coast of West Sumatra, Indonesia, after a swordfish pierced her chest.[287][288]
Johnnie Turner		22 October 2024	The 76-year-old member of the Kentucky Senate died of injuries sustained in an accident on September 15, 2024, when he drove a riding mower into an empty swimming pool.[289][290]
Lester C Harvey Jr		9 December 2024	A group of hunters chased a bear into a tree, and as the group retreated from the bottom of the tree, one hunter shot the bear. As the animal fell, it struck the 58-year-old from Phenix, Virginia, who stood about 10 feet (3.0 m) from the tree, killing him.[291][292] The bear also died.
Ethan Alexander Ackerman		25 January 2025	The 20-year-old Clemson University student was cleaning up debris around fallen trees in South Carolina when one of the trees sprang upright, trapping him under its base. Ackerman died of "blunt force chest trauma resulting in traumatic asphyxiation".[293][294]
Davi Nunes Moreira		14 February 2025	The 14-year-old Brazilian boy injected the remains of a dead butterfly mixed with water into his leg, which led to septic shock that was possibly caused by toxins in the butterfly.[295][296][297]
Sunjay Kapur		12 June 2025	The 53-year-old Indian billionaire and longtime friend of Prince William died after accidentally swallowing a bee while playing polo at the Queen's Cup in Windsor, England, which stung him and sent him into anaphylactic shock.[298][299]
Keith McAllister		17 July 2025	The 61-year-old man died after he was sucked into an MRI machine at a medical center in Westbury, New York while wearing a heavy metal necklace. He died in the hospital the following day.[300][301][302]
Angela Lin		19 July 2025	The 29-year-old was killed when hiking in Yosemite National Park while walking under giant sequoias. The group she was with heard a loud cracking noise and a large branch came crashing down on Angela. She was pronounced deceased at the scene.[303][304]