11 - Erica Marshall
Florida veterinarian Erica Marshall was killed in an explosion on February the 10th of 2012 after a
horse she was treating in a high oxygen chamber tried to kick its way out. The animal had been
treated several times for his undisclosed condition before the incident, so he wasn’t
sedated at the time. It wasn’t immediately made clear what had initially startled it and prompted
it to lash out aggressively. The equine died instantly after it managed to break through
the padding, scraping the metal wall and causing a spark, which precipitated what was described as a
“horribly huge explosion”. The 28-year-old woman was observing the animal in an adjacent room,
but the explosion was so powerful that its reverberations were heard more than 30 miles
away from the equine rehabilitation center. Another employee, 33-year-old Sorcha Moneley,
suffered non-fatal injuries in the blast. 10 - Phillip Joel Hughes
On November the 25th of 2014, cricket player Phillip Joel Hughes was struck in the neck by
a ball during the Sheffield Shield tournament in Australia, resulting in his death two days later.
Hughes, who would have turned 26 on the 30th of that month, suffered from a vertebral artery
dissection, which consequently produced a massive internal hemorrhage. One of the doctors present at
the tournament, Peter Brukner, was stunned by the accident, explaining there had only been 100 cases
of such injury ever reported, with Hughes being the only case in which the malady had been caused
by a cricket ball. Although Hughes was wearing a helmet at the time, he was struck in a small
unprotected spot beneath his left ear. The man was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent surgery
but ultimately passed away from his injury. Two years later, on October the 10th of 2016,
a coronial investigation was launched, which led to the official determination that neither the
other players nor the umpires had any culpability in the extraordinarily unfortunate incident.
9 - Hisashi Ouchi
Japanese technician Hisashi Ouchi spent 83 days in agony after being exposed to the highest level
of radiation ever suffered by a human on September the 30th of 1999, the day of the Tokaimura nuclear
power plant accident. Exposure to anything over 7 sieverts is reportedly considered lethal; Ouchi
was exposed to 17 on the day in question. Many of the plant’s workers hadn’t been properly trained
to handle uranium, and they were rushing to finish an assignment after missing a deadline, leading to
the explosion. Though the 35-year-old man suffered the worst radiation burns ever recorded, he didn’t
immediately die at the scene, and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Medical
personnel attempted to mitigate the devastating effects of the radiation, which included Ouchi’s
skin peeling off even after multiple grafts had been performed. His body had lost the ability to
generate new blood, leading specialists to attempt stem cell transplants, an approach
never previously used on a radiation victim. The treatment initially seemed to be working,
but Ouchi’s condition soon deteriorated again. He suffered frequent heart attacks, sometimes up to
three in a single hour, and was revived at the insistence of his family. He finally died of a
multi-organ failure on December the 21st of 1999. 8 - Jennifer Riordan
On April the 17th of 2018, Wells Fargo executive Jennifer Riordan died after being sucked out
of her seat on a Southwest Airlines flight. The 43-year-old woman was traveling from New York to
Dallas when one of the plane’s engines suddenly exploded, shattering her window. The resulting
decompression caused Riordan’s upper body to be expelled from the plane, even though she had been
wearing her seatbelt at the time. While other passengers frantically attempted to pull the
woman back inside, she was fatally struck in the head and torso by shrapnel from the left
engine. The craft’s pilot managed to make a successful emergency landing in Philadelphia,
while a passenger performed CPR on Riordan. The life-saving efforts proved fruitless,
and she died before doctors could reach her upon the plane’s landing. Seven other people
were reportedly injured during the incident, but each of them managed to make full recoveries.
7 - Margaret Maurer In 2019, Tulane University
student Margaret Maurer was fatally struck by two dislodged truck tires while walking out of
a bathroom at a Mississippi gas station. The 21-year-old had been heading to Georgia for a
Spring Break hiking trip with two friends, when the 500 pound tires, which were bolted together,
detached from a nearby 18-wheeler. The truck driver stopped and went back to check what had
happened, at which point he came upon Maurer in critical condition. She was ultimately declared
dead at the scene after resuscitation efforts proved unsuccessful. The driver,
whose name was not released to the press, wasn’t charged in connection to the freak accident.
6 - Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow,
an artist who went by the stage name Taylor Mitchell, became the only documented adult to
be killed by coyotes on October the 27th of 2009. Luciow, who was 19 at the time of the attack,
had been touring Canada following the release of her debut album. The Toronto resident decided to
go trekking in Cape Breton Highland National Park before one of her scheduled concerts.
That afternoon, an American couple identified only as Mike and Gayle saw a pair of coyotes
walking uncharacteristically close to the hiking tracks, and soon after the initial sighting,
heard a woman’s agonized screams. They rushed to a telephone box and contacted local authorities,
at the same time a group of four hikers discovered torn pieces of Luciow’s bloodied clothes, as
well as her keys and pocket knife. The concerned witnesses began searching for the injured singer,
eventually discovering her lying unconscious with a coyote standing over her. The animal
refused to abandon its prey until mounted police officers arrived on site and shot at it. Luciow
presented with severe bite wounds all over her body, and was airlifted to the hospital,
where she would ultimately die of severe blood loss. Wildlife experts noted that the aggressive
and dominant attitude of the coyotes in the area was uncommon for the species.
5 - Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada Iowa man Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada
had been suffering from hallucinations and acting erratically leading up to November
the 28th of 2009, when his family reported him missing. The 25-year-old had never returned home
from his job at a Council Bluffs supermarket. It wasn’t until the store was shut down and workers
were sent to clean up the building 10 years later that Murillo-Moncada’s body was finally
found stuck in an 18-inch gap between a cooler and the wall, in a storage area. Though local
police suspected the remains to have belonged to the missing man, the state of decomposition
was too severe for a visual verification. DNA testing confirmed his identity a week
after the discovery of the body. Investigators believed that the loud noises produced by the
coolers muffled the young man’s screams after he’d become trapped, preventing him from gaining the
attention of his co-workers before his eventual death, which was officially ruled an accident.
4 - Robert Nicholas Williams On January the 25th of 1979,
Robert Nicholas Williams became the first person to be killed by a robot. At the time of his
historic demise, the 25-year-old was employed at the Ford Motor Company in Flat Rock, Michigan. He
was reported as having been one of the workers tasked with handling a five-story tall robot,
and apparently hadn’t received appropriate training to operate the machine. That morning,
an erroneous calculation of the inventory required him to manually retrieve the packages. When he
reached the machine’s third level, Williams was struck by one of the transfer vehicles,
which transported boxes, causing him to fall to his death. His body was discovered by his
coworkers half an hour after the incident, when they’d grown concerned that he hadn’t emerged
from the machine. 3 - Peng Fan
Peng Fan, a chef specializing in snake meat, died after being bitten by a beheaded spitting cobra
he was using to prepare one of his dishes. The accident happened in August of 2014 at a
restaurant located in the Guangdong province of China. 44-year-old Lin Sunne, one of the
guests present at the restaurant that night, testified he heard screaming coming from the
kitchen. Fan had attempted to discard the snake’s head about 20 minutes after decapitating it, when
the cobra’s fangs sank into his hand, injecting him with a neurotoxin that paralyzed the victim’s
respiratory system. Unfortunately, Peng died from asphyxiation before emergency responders could
arrive and administer life-saving antivenom. In the aftermath, wildlife experts detailed
how all reptiles can continue exhibiting movements for up to an hour after death.
2 - Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko On November the 23th of 2006,
43-year-old Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko became the first person confirmed to have died
from a malicious use of polonium-210. Litvinenko was reportedly a Russian defector who’d been
highly critical of President Vladimir Putin’s government. On November the 1st of that same
year, he was hospitalized in London after exhibiting symptoms of radiation poisoning,
to which he ultimately succumbed. Investigators in charge of the case eventually came to suspect the
involvement of Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, two former members of Russia’s protective service,
with whom the victim had shared lunch earlier that day. The Kremlin refused to extradite either
alleged perpetrator to the UK for questioning, even though traces of polonium had been discovered
in Kovtun’s house and car. A statement was released the day after Litvinenko’s death,
outright blaming President Putin for the attack. 1 - Thomas Anthony Mansfield
Thomas Anthony Mansfield, a personal trainer from Colwyn Bay in the UK, died on January the 5th of
2021 after drinking the equivalent of several hundred cups of coffee. The 29-year-old man had
been preparing a pre-workout drink, but failed to notice that the kitchen scale he was using
measured in grams instead of milligrams, causing him to miscalculate the amount of powdered coffee
required. Mansfield was with his wife at the moment of his death, who claimed he had gulped
down the drink before immediately falling ill. The man clutched at his chest and started foaming at
the mouth upon consuming the extremely caffeinated beverage; by the time the ambulance arrived,
his heart rhythm was “grossly abnormal” and paramedics were forced to use a defibrillator.
Several attempts to perform CPR on Mansfield failed before he was officially declared dead
at 4 pm. A subsequent autopsy revealed that Mansfield had 392 mg of caffeine per liter
of blood in his system. Any amount above 80 mg per liter of the ubiquitous stimulant is
reportedly considered to be a lethal dose. Thanks for watching! What is your worst
nightmare when it comes to your own death? Let us know in the comments section below!