Number 8 Ben Corser
A British tourist said to have been “at the wrong place, at the wrong time” was gunned down outside
a supermarket in Mexico in May of 2022. Ben Corser, a software engineer from Cornwall,
had been traveling through the country since January. In late spring, he was living with
a Mexican-American family near the city of Colima, in the country’s west. The 37-year-old
had become friends with two young men from the household, Claudio and Alfredo, with whom
he would often go skateboarding. The trio were sitting in a car after they’d picked up groceries
at a store on Camino Real Boulevard, in Colima. Suddenly and without warning, they were caught
in a hail of bullets. Claudio, Alfredo, and Corser, who was sitting in the back, were
all killed in what was reported as an entirely random shooting. There were no signs of a robbery
or kidnapping attempt and the working theory was that the men had either been misidentified
or caught in the crossfire of a gang dispute. Colima had experienced a surge of violence in
the weeks leading up to the tragedy but none of it had reportedly been directed at tourists.
Number 7 Jordan Taylor Through a YouTube vlog from September of 2018,
an American travel blogger recounted her horrific experience during a trip to India, several months
earlier. Jordan Taylor noted that, towards the end of her three-week stay in New Delhi,
she was harassed on multiple occasions. For most of the trip, Taylor, who went by Travellight
on the video-sharing platform, was joined by her boyfriend, Livio. The first disturbing encounter
she experienced was at a hotel where a group of men grabbed and started groping her in the lobby.
In spite of the fact that Livio was right next to her, one of the aggressors reportedly got very
close to Taylor’s face and explicitly stated that he wanted to have intimate relations with her. In
the incident’s wake, the couple checked out and opted for the OYO Hotel on Main Bazaar Road in
Paharganj. Livio’s flight was four days earlier than Taylor’s and he left early in the morning,
as the couple deemed it would be safer if no one knew that the young woman would be staying
at the hotel unaccompanied. Taylor detailed in her vlog that the staff had begun “acting completely
different” towards her upon realizing that her boyfriend had checked out. Moreover,
she accused the hotel of having given out her personal information to a “stalker”.
One man followed her upstairs while another phoned her room, saying “hey baby” before hanging up. The
calls continued and, two days before her flight, one man knocked on the door asking to come into
Taylor’s room. She refused and then heard him turn off a power switch after which the man
returned claiming that he was there to fix the AC. A similar situation occurred later on when
another worker turned off her WiFi. Taylor’s vlog has since been viewed over 3.8 million times on
YouTube while the OYO was reported to have shut down pending an investigation in the aftermath.
Number 6 Alister Gray
British tourist Alister Gray was returning to his hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, after a night
out to a local bar, in May of 2022. As captured by CCTV, 32-year-old Gray was heading towards an
underground station when a hooded man followed him and tried to snatch his phone out of his hands.
Gray held on to his device and fought back after the mugger punched him in the head.
The tourist appeared to land another strike on his attacker but proceeded to run away when his
accomplices attempted to join the brawl. They chased the civil engineer out of the view of
surveillance cameras. Gray was then stabbed seven times, with the most severe of the knife strikes
impacting his neck and chest area, before the gang ran off with his phone. He was taken to a
hospital in critical condition but staff were able to stabilize him. Surveillance footage
captured in the attack’s aftermath showed the gang calmly walking through the streets. Three of the
young men involved in the incident were named as Enes Yoldas, Seyithan Erdem and Abdurrahman
Baydak while the fourth, reported as underage, was only identified via his initials as UA.
The muggers, all of whom had criminal records, were arrested following a raid
conducted by local authorities. Number 5 Pierrick Jamaux
Cryptocurrency expert Pierrick Jamaux was visiting New York City from Hong Kong,
in the spring of 2022. He was getting out of an Uber with his model wife, 26-year-old Sarah Watts,
and another female companion in front of the Fifty Hotel and Suites in Manhattan. A gunman
approached 33-year-old Jamaux and demanded he hand over his six-figure Richard Mille watch,
which the man often displayed on his social media. The robber opened fire, before Jamaux could react,
shooting him multiple times in both legs. The victim’s 25-year-old female companion then
jumped on the gunman’s back. He shook her off but the intervention prompted him to flee the scene
in a getaway BMW without the targeted time piece. Jamaux was taken to the ICU at Bellevue Hospital,
where he recovered and subsequently thanked Watts for her support in an Instagram post.
The gunman was identified as 35-year-old career criminal Nathaniel Owens, who’d either become
aware of the luxury watch through social media or by following the victim. Owens had been arrested
18 times in the past and was on parole for a 2012 weapons conviction at the time of the robbery. He
was taken into custody and imprisoned at Rikers Island on charges that included attempted murder.
Also charged with the latter, in addition to robbery, assault and criminal possession of a
weapon was New Jersey woman Whitney Wiggins, who’d acted as Owens’s getaway driver.
Number 4 Evgeniia Smirnova Russian webcam performer Evgeniia Smirnova arrived
in Phuket, Thailand, on May the 25th of 2022. A few days later, she was at the Emerald Terrace
condominium complex, in Patong, attending a party that local authorities would later claim involved
alcohol, intercourse and illicit substances. At some point during the night, 37-year-old Smirnova
climbed on an outside staircase between the seventh and eighth floors. She then plummeted
roughly 80 feet to the ground below. The woman was reportedly found wearing just her underwear
and suffering from fatal head injuries in addition to a broken leg. Initially treated as an accident,
the death was then investigated under suspicion of foul play after a clump of human hair was found
in Smirnova’s hand. Thai authorities submitted the sample to DNA testing and didn’t disclose
the result but they did report to have found an extremely elevated level of alcohol in the
victim’s blood. Jamaal Smith, from the US, and Jordanian man Ahmad Alatoom, both in their 30s,
were arrested along with Russian model Natalia Kosenkova. All three of them were charged with
recklessness causing death for which they each faced 10 years in prison if convicted. 35-year-old
Kosenkova called Smirnova’s death an “unfortunate incident” but denied that she’d been murdered.
She also maintained to have met the victim at the party and accused Smirnova’s friend,
Alatoom, of having behaved inappropriately on the night. The latter was taken into custody
while in the process of booking a flight out of Thailand and, like the others,
was suspected to have had a hand in Smirnova’s death, although the extent of his involvement in
the incident was still being investigated. Number 3 Hawaii Helicopter Crash
At around 5 pm, on June the 8th of 2022, a Bell 407 helicopter left the Paradise Helicopters base
at Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport, on the island of Hawaii. The early stages of the
flight unfolded normally but, after about half an hour, the aircraft experienced a “violent upset,
followed by an uncontrollable spin to the right”. One of the five passengers would
later report seeing a piece fall off the aircraft, but couldn’t identify what it was. The helicopter
continued to spin during its erratic descent and eventually crashed into a lava field between
Ranchos Subdivision and South Point Road. One of its occupants then placed an emergency call.
The pilot was severely injured and had to he be extricated from the mangled wreck, photos of
which were picked up by multiple media outlets in the days that followed. The crash was still
being investigated as of the latest updates but no fatalities were reported. Travelers Clay Watson—an
auto dealer from Chattanooga, Tennessee—and his daughters, Kennedy and Clayton, were
identified as being among the injured passengers. Today's topic was requested by Kristina Savic,
Mimie Flying Squad and Ellie Colbran. If you have any other topics you'd like to learn about,
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Number 2 Sylwia Rajchel 23-year-old Polish tourist Sylwia Rajchel,
from Lublin, was visiting a landmark bridge called Puente de Triana, in the southern
Spanish city of Seville, in the fall of 2014. The trip was, according to Rajchel’s mother,
a “dream come true” for the nursing student who’d reportedly taught herself Spanish and hoped to
work in the country in the future. She wanted to mark the trip by taking a selfie on the bridge,
which was built in the mid-19th century and often frequented by tourists. While balancing on a
ledge and adjusting her position for the photo, Rajchel slipped and fell 15 feet. She impacted
the concrete footings of the bridge and went into cardiac arrest. Emergency workers were able to
revive her at the scene but the young woman later succumbed to her injuries in a local hospital.
Number 1 Egypt Shark Attacks In July of 2022, two tourists were
mauled to death by sharks at the Egyptian bay of Sahl Hasheesh, south of the Hurghada tourist hub.
English-speaking guests had warned life guards at the beach that they’d spotted the predatory
fish in the water but were reportedly laughed off after being told there were no sharks at the bay
and had never been. Roughly 15 minutes later, 68-year-old Austrian tourist Elisabeth Sauer
was attacked while snorkeling in the coastal waters. The mauling was caught on video by
terrified onlookers and the woman tried to fight off the shark, reported as an oceanic whitetip,
but ended up losing an arm and a leg. She was, nevertheless, able to get back to shore
with the help of a flipper. Sauer was given CPR at the scene but later went into shock
and died at a local hospital. On the same day, the badly disfigured remains of a Romanian tourist,
40-year-old Roxana Donisan, were discovered on a nearby reef. She was believed to have been
killed in a manner similar to Sauer and was found only 650 feet from the site of the other attack.
However, according to the reports of another tourist, Donisan had disappeared from the
five-star Premiere Le Reve hotel two days prior. That aspect invited speculation that
she might’ve been the first victim and sparked rumors of a local cover-up attempt, as none of
the beaches had been closed and no warnings had been released in the aftermath. The authorities
only took the appropriate measures after Sauer’s death, which had occurred in a much more public
manner than Donisan’s. According to local guides, the heightened shark activity had been caused by
a transport of sheep which had sunk, resulting in the animals drowning and attracting the predators.
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