Everyone hopes to die peacefully, surrounded by their loved ones. Though we have little to no control over the way we die, we could never imagine being killed by a falling dog or crushed by a falling cow. But people die in ways both bizarre and incomprehensible. Here’s our list of 10 unimaginable ways people died which sounds straight from the Final Destination movie.
1 In September 1987, two thieves discovered a glowing substance in stolen equipment from an abandoned hospital. It was handled, shown to friends and family, and ingested by a toddler. This resulted in four deaths as the mysterious substance was radioactive.
Goiânia accident.
In 1985, IGR, a radiotherapy institute in Goiania, Brazil, left behind a teletherapy unit when moving on to a new location. The abandoned site was a disputed property. This prevented the owner of the institute from removing the unit that had the radioactive material, cesium 137.
On 13 September 1987, two thieves, Wagner Mota Pereira and Roberto dos Santos Alves, entered the unguarded facility to get their hands on the scraps. They took home the assembly containing the material and disassembled it. The next day, Pereira fell sick with diarrhea, swelling, and dizziness.
He continued to dismantle the unit, and on the third day punctured a hole in the cesium capsule. A deep blue glow radiated from the opening.
On 18 September, the items were sold to a scrapyard owner, Devair Alves Ferreira. The blue light from the capsule caught his attention and put it on display for family and friends.
Devair’s brother took home some dust from the mysterious substance. There, intrigued by the glow, his six-year-old daughter rubbed it on her body.
Four people died from the ill-fated chain of events:
1.Eighteen-year-old Alves de Souza worked in the scrapyard of Devair Ferreira.
2. Six-year-old Leide das Neves Ferreira, who rubbed the radioactive dust on her body. It also came in contact with the sandwich she ate.
3. Gabriela Maria Ferreira, wife of Devair Ferreira.
4. Israel Baptista dos Santos worked for Devair Ferreira and extracted lead from the radioactive equipment. (1, 2)
2 In 1991, a woman in a rural area of Thailand accidentally slipped in the mud, grabbed a live wire, and died from electrocution. Later that day, when her sister was showing neighbors how the accident happened, she slipped in the mud, grabbed the same live wire, and died.
Live wire.
Fifty-seven-year-old Yooket Paen was electrocuted to death, in Angthong, 60 miles north of Bangkok. She was walking on her farm when she slipped on cowpat. To steady herself, she grabbed a live wire resulting in her death.
After Paen’s funeral, her 52-year old sister, Yooket Pan, decided to show the neighbors how the tragedy unfolded. During the demonstration, she slipped in the mud, held on to the same live wire, and was electrocuted. (1, 2)
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3 Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of TLC fame was in a car accident that killed ten-year-old Bayron Lopez. She mourned the boy and felt that death “made a mistake” due to their similar last names, and it was her that was supposed to die. Two weeks later, she died in another car accident.
On 25 April 2002, rapper and singer Lisa Nicole Lopes died in a car accident in La Ceiba, Honduras. She was driving a rented Mitsubishi Montero when her SUV rolled over after she swerved to avoid a truck and then immediately turned right to dodge a car.
She was thrown out of the window and died instantly. The moments leading up to the accident was recorded by a cameraman riding in the front passenger seat.
About two weeks before her death, Lopes was involved in another car accident that killed Bayron Lopez, a ten-year-old Honduran boy.
Though no blame was put on her, she took care of the funeral. In the documentary The Last Days of Left Eye, she is even seen buying a casket for the deceased child.
Eerily enough, in the same documentary, she is recorded to have said that she felt a spirit was following her before the accident. The spirit was supposed to kill her but mistakenly killed the boy as they had a similar last name. (source)
4 On the night of 24 September 2017, Elizabeth Isherwood was trapped in an airing cupboard after the doorknob broke off in her hand. When she tried to escape by digging through the wall with a pipe she had broken, Isherwood got drenched in water from the burst pipe and died of hypothermia.
On 23 September 2017, 60-year-old Elizabeth Isherwood went to the Plas Talgarth Country Club for a stay. At night, when returning to bed from the en-suite bathroom, she took the wrong turn and entered an airing cupboard.
As she attempted to open the door to leave, the doorknob broke off, leaving her trapped inside. In an attempt to escape, she tried to dig through the wall.
For this, it is likely that she broke a pipe to use as a chisel. As she clawed through the bricks and the plaster, she was drenched with water spraying from the broken pipe. This plummeted her body temperature and hypothermia set in.
A week later, she was found dead by the hotel staff. (1, 2)
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5 In July 2013, forty-five-year-old João Maria de Souza was crushed by a 3,000-pound cow when it fell through the roof and landed on his side of the bed.
João Maria de Souza was sleeping in his bed at his home in Caratinga, Brazil when his bedroom roof caved in and a cow landed on him.
The bovine was grazing behind the house when it stepped on the roof, which immediately collapsed, and fell eight feet down on João Maria, fracturing his leg.
An injured but conscious Maria was taken to a nearby hospital where he died of internal bleeding.
6 On 21 October 1998, a poodle fell from a 13th-floor balcony triggering three deaths. Marta Espina was killed when the poodle landed on her, Edith Sola was hit by a bus as she stood watching the incident, and an unidentified man, who witnessed both the incidents, suffered a heart attack.
Images used for representational purposes only. Image credits: Trove.nla.gov.au
A poodle named “Cachi” fell from the balcony of the Montaya family home on the 13th floor and hit 75-year-old Marta Espina on her head. They both died on the spot.
Soon, Edith Sola joined the crowd that had gathered around the scene. She was standing in the middle of the street at the edge of the crowd, when a bus knocked her down, killing her instantly.
As the last link in this chain of fatal events, a man witnessed both the deaths and suffered a heart attack. He has rushed away in an ambulance but died before reaching the hospital. (Source)
