This is the latest preview of a work in progress tentatively titled Almanac of Bad Days. For the origin of the project, see this post.
April 14, 1865: U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth.
April 15, 1865: After being in a coma for eight hours, Abraham Lincoln dies from the bullet wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth.
April 21, 2016: The musician who performs as Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is found dead in an elevator inside his home. He has apparently passed away from taking pills of the opioid medication hydrocodone, to which he was addicted, which were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. He is 57 years old.
On the same day, true crime writer Michelle McNamara dies in her sleep of an accidental overdose of street drugs and prescription medication. McNamara’s husband, actor Patton Oswalt, has acknowledged that McNamara was addicted to opioids. Her health condition was caused, in part, by her harrowing research on her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. The book tells the story of a serial rapist and murderer who was not caught until 2018, two years after McNamara’s death.
April 22, 1915: 27-year-old poet Rupert Brooks dies of sepsis due to wounds he received fighting for the British Royal Navy during the First World War.
April 22, 1987: 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy, who lives in the Grace Abbott Homes public housing project in Chicago, called the police to report that, “...some people next door are totally tearing this down, you know–” When the dispatcher pressed her for clarification, McCoy said, “Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down...I’m in the projects, I’m on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom.”
What the dispatcher didn’t know was that in the Grace Abbott Homes, the contractors who built the building had left the apartments’ back-to-back bathrooms connected by a narrow tunnel, which had made access easier for the plumbers. Neighborhood residents intent on burglary had discovered that by removing the bathroom mirror of one apartment, they could crawl through the narrow tunnel and reach the bathroom of the apartment on the opposite side.
This is what happened to McCoy: would-be burglars came through the space where her bathroom mirror had been and shot her to death. A second 911 call from a neighbor reported the sound of gunshots coming from McCoy’s apartment. Police knocked on McCoy’s door that night, but when they received no answer, they left without entering the apartment. Apparently they were unwilling to break down the door due to the prospect of being sued.
McCoy’s lifeless body is found the next day; she has been shot four times. The tragic story of urban neglect and the intruders who entered the apartment through a bathroom mirror inspired the movie Candyman.
April 22, 2000: Playing Judas in an Easter play in Rome, Renato Di Paolo dies by accidental hanging. His death is caught on film by a member of the audience.
April 22, 2012: Brazilian actor Tiago Klimeck is taken off life support and dies. He has been in a coma since accidentally hanging himself while performing as Judas Iscariot in an Easter passion play in Itarare, Brazil. Klimeck is 27 years old. He may have accidentally gotten some of his clothes tangled in the safety harness meant to give him the illusion of hanging by his neck.
April 22, 2021: 57-year-old Gregory Jacobs, the musician who rapped under the name Shock G and other aliases, dies of an apparently accidental overdose of fentanyl, alcohol, and methamphetamine.
April 25, 2002: Rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is driving an SUV in La Cieba, Honduras, where she’s filming a documentary while on a spiritual retreat with her two siblings. She swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve into the path of another vehicle, causing her to swerve sharply to the left. She strikes two trees, throwing her and three passengers from the SUV. Lopes, who is only 30 years old, dies instantly of severe head trauma. Her passengers are injured, but survive.
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