List of Unusual Deaths in the 21st Century – Funniest, Weird & Strangest Deaths Ever

List of unusual deaths with person’s name, date since the year 2000, check funniest, weird, scariest, most tragic & strangest deaths ever happened in the 21st century. This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded in the 21st century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

Unusual deaths refer to fatalities that occur under unique, bizarre, or extraordinary circumstances. While the definition of “unusual” may vary depending on individual perspectives, here are some of examples of unusual deaths.

List of Unusual Deaths Since 2000

Name of Person	Date of Death	Details
Bliss Scott	4-Jun-2000	Bliss Scott, 7, died after touching an African snail, from which she contracted meningoencephalitis caused by Angiostrongylus cantonensis. This is the first reported case of a human fatality linked to the African snail.
Bernd Brandes	9-Mar-2001	Bernd Jürgen Brandes was voluntarily slaughtered and eaten by Armin Meiwes, following an appointment via internet. At his request, Meiwes first amputated his penis and they unsuccessfully tried to eat it. Meiwes taped the entire amputation and killing, and conserved and ate Brandes’ meat. Meiwes was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison. Meiwes became a vegetarian during his prison sentence.
Michael Colombini	28-Jul-2001	Michael Colombini, 6, 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.
Gilbert Tinoso	22-Dec-2001	Gilbert Tinoso, 38, died in Burbank, California after the spare wheel from an oncoming Mack cement truck in the opposite stretch of the freeway broke loose and struck the cab of his Toyota Tacoma. The other passenger in the Tacoma received minor chest injuries from the crash, and the Mack driver had no injuries.
Brittanie Cecil	18-Mar-2002	Brittanie Cecil, 13, died from her injuries at an NHL hockey game after a deflected puck struck her in the left temple. She was the first and only fan fatality in the league’s history.
Roger Wallace	May-2002	Wallace, 60, was flying his 5-foot (1.5 m) wingspan toy in Tucson, Arizona, when he lost sight of it in the bright sun. It struck him in the chest, killing him.
Virginia Graeme Baker	Jun-2002	Baker, 7, was entrapped underwater due to the suction from a hot tub drain and drowned.
Hitoshi Nikaidoh	16-Aug-2003	Hitoshi Nikaidoh, a doctor in 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.
Brian Wells	28-Aug-2003	Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed after a collar bomb around his neck exploded as part of a bank robbery scheme.
Phillip Quinn	2004	Phillip Quinn, 24, from Kent, Washington, was killed when a lava lamp he was heating on a stove exploded, and a shard pierced his heart.
Francis Daniel Brohm	2-Sep-2004	John Hutcherson, 21, drove home drunk with his friend Francis Brohm, 23, who was hanging out the passenger window while vomiting due to carsickness. Hutcherson drove off the road and sideswiped a telephone pole support wire, decapitating Brohm. He continued the final 12 miles (19 km) to his Atlanta, Georgia, home, parked in the driveway, and went to bed. A neighbor found Brohm’s headless body in the truck the next morning.
Kenneth Pinyan	2-Jul-2005	Kenneth Pinyan died from injuries caused by anal sex with a stallion.
Mildred Bowman and Alice Wardle	Aug-2005	Two sisters, Mildred Bowman, 62, and Alice Wardle, 68, died in Benidorm, Spain, after becoming trapped for four days when their fold-up Murphy bed collapsed.
Steve Irwin	4-Sep-2006	Steve Irwin, an 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.
Alexander Litvinenko	23-Nov-2006	Alexander Litvinenko, 44, a naturalised British citizen, former FSB officer, and defector from Russia, was assassinated by poisoning with polonium-210, which caused acute and irreversible radiation sickness. One of just a handful of recorded deaths attributed specifically to polonium exposure, Litvinenko was the first-known fatality from malicious polonium poisoning, and remains the only confirmed such case as of 2023.
Humberto Hernandez	21-Jun-2007	Humberto Hernandez, 24, an 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.
Abigail Taylor	Jun-2007	Taylor, a six-year old, died from medical complications as a result of her evisceration caused by powerful suction from a pool drain.
Lydia Tsekova	2-Feb-2008	Bulgarian teacher Lydia Tsekova, with her husband Georgi and colleague Nadezhda Lyubenova, poured chemical waste into a drain cover in Sofia, Bulgaria. The chemicals reacted with the gases in the sewers and caused an explosion. The drain cover decapitated Tsekova, and the blast injured her husband and Lyubenova.
Judy Kay Zagorski	20-Mar-2008	Judy Kay Zagorski, 57, of 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 of the coast of Marathon Key, Florida. The ray also died.
Adelir Antônio de Carli	21-Apr-2008	Adelir Antônio de Carli, a Brazilian Catholic priest and sky diver, undertook a cluster balloon flight on 20 April 2008. The intention was to break the previous endurance records for ballooning, and to raise funds for charity. However, contact was lost part-way through. The lower part of his body was found floating in the sea eleven weeks later on 4 July.
Isaiah Otieno	13-May-2008	Isaiah Otieno, a Kenyan student studying in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, 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.
David Phyall	5-Jul-2008	David Phyall, 50, the last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, England, decapitated himself with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out of it.
Unknown	7-Oct-2008	A 43-year-old Irish woman died of an anaphylactic 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 destroyed.
Unknown	3-Mar-2009	A boy, 14, from Jiaozhou, Shandong, China, was killed when the pneumatic cylinder in his office chair exploded.
Diane Durre	3-Apr-2009	Diane Durre, 49, 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 Diane and injuring her husband, Mark.
Mark Fidrych	13-Apr-2009	Mark Fidrych, 54, a former Major League Baseball pitcher of the Detroit Tigers, died while working underneath his dump truck. His clothes had become entangled with the power take-off drive shaft, suffocating him.
Taylor Mitchell	28-Oct-2009	Taylor Mitchell, 19, a 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.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada	28-Nov-2009	Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, 25, a supermarket employee from Council Bluffs, Iowa, is believed to have fallen into an 18-inch (460 mm) gap between a cooler and a wall and became trapped. His body was discovered ten years later when the cooler was moved.
Vladimir Likhonos	2-Dec-2009	Vladimir Likhonos, 25, a student of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute from Konotop, was killed when his chewing gum exploded. Likhonos had a habit of dipping his chewing gum in citric acid to increase the gum’s sour taste. On his work table police found about 100 grams (3.5 oz) of unidentified explosive powder which he used for chemistry studies at home. It resembled citric acid, and it is thought that he confused the two, having accidentally coated his gum in the explosive powder before chewing it. The explosive was found to be four times stronger than TNT, and the explosion was possibly triggered either by reacting with Likhonos’s saliva, or the pressure exerted by him chewing on the gum and explosive powder.
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe	3-Mar-2010	Muraka Jenny Vearncombe, 42, 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.
Gareth Williams	16-Aug-2010	Welsh mathematician and GCHQ spy Gareth Williams, 31, was found dead and naked in a bag that had been padlocked from the outside, in the bath of his home in Central London. The inquest found his death was likely criminal, although a Metropolitan Police investigation later found that it was likely an accident.
Mike Edwards	3-Sep-2010	Mike Edwards, 62, a 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.
Jimi Heselden	26-Sep-2010	Jimi Heselden, 62, owner of Segway Inc., died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System off a cliff in Thorp Arch, England. 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.
Jose Luis Ochoa	30-Jan-2011	Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, 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.
Unknown	6-Jun-2011	An unnamed woman from Gatineau, Canada, 25, and an unnamed 40-year-old man from Ottawa 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.
Brian Depledge	10-Sep-2011	Father of two Brian Depledge, 38, was home alone placing wet laundry on a clothes horse, a type of drying rack, when he accidentally tripped over a small stool and fell backwards into the rack, trapping himself. Authorities state it appears he attempted to free himself, but the struggle only caused the rungs to tighten around his chest and neck even more. Coroner Prof. Paul Marks remarked his death was “probably rarer than being struck by lightning or struck by a meteorite.”
Erica Marshall	10-Feb-2012	Erica Marshall, 28, a 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, Sorcha Moneley, was seriously injured.
Anthony Hensley	14-Apr-2012	Anthony Hensley, 37, 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.
Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr	21-Aug-2012	Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, both 19, died after more than 20 coal cars (out of 90) from a CSX freight train derailed in Ellicott City, Maryland. They were walking alongside the train tracks late at night. Reports say that the two women were found buried in a pile of coal. The derailment was possibly caused by a broken rail according to the NTSB.
Ilda Vitor Maciel	28-Sep-2012	Ilda Vitor Maciel, 88, died in a hospital in Barra Mansa, Rio de Janeiro, allegedly as a result of nursing technicians injecting soup through her intravenous drip instead of her feeding tube.
Kendrick Johnson	10-Jan-2013	Kendrick Johnson, 17, was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium. 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. The homicide case was dismissed, and Kendrick’s parents were accused of fabricating evidence. In 2016, they were sentenced to pay more than US$292,000 in legal fees. The case was reopened again 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.
James Campbell	14 January 2013	When James Campbell, 68, left his van to open a gate, his dog stepped on the van’s gas pedal and ran him over.
Takuya Nagaya	18 January 2013	Takuya Nagaya, 23, from Japan, started to slither on the floor and claimed he had become a snake. He died after his father spent the next two days head-butting and biting him “to drive [out] the snake that had possessed him”.
Elisa Lam	Feb-2013	Elisa Lam, 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.
Jeffery Bush	28-Feb-2013	Jeffery Bush, 37, from the Tampa area, was killed while he slept in his bedroom when a giant sinkhole measuring 15 feet (4.6 m) wide and 20 feet (6.1 m) deep opened below and swallowed his entire bedroom. His body was never recovered.
Roger Mirro	30-Jul-2013	Roger Mirro was crushed by a trash compactor while looking through a dumpster for his phone.
Unknown (♂)	2013	An unnamed Belarusian fisherman, 60, bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab in order to have his picture taken with it.
João Maria de Souza	2013	João Maria de Souza, 45, was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, in southeast Brazil. It had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and de Souza’s wife (who was in the bed next to him) were unharmed.
Miguel Martinez	22-Jun-2013	Miguel Martinez, 14, from Lubbock, Texas, was impaled through the chest by a bull statue’s horn while playing hide-and-seek at night in front of the National Ranching Heritage Center.
Noah Barthe, Connor Barthe	5-Aug-2013	Brothers Noah and Connor Barthe, aged 4 and 6, 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 enclosure in the apartment and slithered through ducts until it fell through the ceiling of the bedroom where they slept. Though the snake suffocated them, it did not attempt to eat them.
Denver Lee St. Clair	21-Dec-2013	Denver Lee St. Clair, 58, was asphyxiated by an “atomic wedgie” administered by his stepson during a fight. 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. The stepson was sentenced to thirty years in prison.
J.R.N.	18-Jan-2014	A Brazilian man, 52, 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 a 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.
Heval Yıldırım	3 October 2014	Heval Yıldırım, 13, of 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.
Peter Biaksangzuala	19 October 2014	Peter Biaksangzuala, an Indian football player from Mizoram state, died after sustaining spinal cord injuries while awkwardly landing a somersault, celebrating a goal.
Christophe de Margerie	20-Oct-2014	Christophe de Margerie, an oil executive, was killed when his corporate jet collided during take-off with an airport snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver.
Peng Fan	2014	Peng Fan, a chef in Foshan, China, was bitten by a cobra’s severed head, which he had cut off 20 minutes earlier while preparing soup.
Gary Anderson	3-Nov-2014	Gary Anderson, 58, of 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 (3.0 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.
Phillip Hughes	27-Nov-2014	Phillip Hughes, 25, an Australian Test and ODI cricketer, was killed by a bouncer striking his neck during a cricket match, causing a vertebral artery dissection.
Stephen Whinfrey	Jan-2015	Stephen Whinfrey, 50, became trapped and asphyxiated when rabbiting near Doncaster, England, after his head became stuck down a rabbit hole.
Charmayne Maxwell	28-Feb-2015	Charmayne Maxwell, a 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.
Stephen Woytack	30-Mar-2015	Stephen Woytack, 74, 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.
Randy Llanes	29-May-2015	Randy Llanes, 47, a fisherman from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, was killed by a swordfish. Llanes had harpooned the fish and jumped into the water to retrieve it, but the swordfish impaled him in the chest.
Jaylon Rippy	2-Jul-2015	Jaylon Rippy, 5, was killed by a leaping sturgeon while she was boating with her family near Fanning Springs, Florida. Her mother, Tanya Faye, 31, and her brother, Trevor, 9, were also injured and needed facial reconstruction surgery.
Chelsea Ake-Salvacion	October 2015	Chelsea Ake-Salvacion, 24, an employee of a beauty salon in Henderson, Nevada, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.
Ravi Subramanian	5-Dec-2015	Ravi Subramanian, an Air India technician, was sucked into an aircraft’s jet engine.
V. Kamaraj	2016	V. Kamaraj, 40, an Indian bus driver, was claimed by local Indian 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”.
Irma Bule	4-Apr-2016	Irma Bule, 29, an Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes, died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.
Lottie Michelle Belk	6 June 2016	Lottie Michelle Belk, 55, was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).
Lane Graves	14 June 2016	Lane Graves, a 2-year-old boy from Nebraska, was on vacation and playing on the beach in Seven Seas Lagoon about 9pm on 14 June 2016, at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa just outside of Orlando, Florida when an alligator approached and dragged him under the water. Graves’s body was found nearby the next day, intact and apparently drowned.
Anton Yelchin	19-Jun-2016	Anton Yelchin, 27, an 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. 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.
Kristopher Moules and Timothy Gilliam Jr.	18-Jul-2016	Kristopher Moules, 25, a correctional officer, and Timothy Gilliam Jr., 27, an 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 CO Moules’ death a homicide and declared Gilliam’s death an accident.
Unknown	26-Jul-2016	A seven-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo in Rabat, Morocco.
Caleb Schwab	7-Aug-2016	Caleb Schwab, 10, was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide at Schlitterbahn Kansas City, US.
Julio Macías González	26-Aug-2016	Julio Macías González, 17, from Mexico City, died from a cerebrovascular accident caused by embolus formed on a neck hickey.
Ten people	21-Nov-2016	On 21 November 2016, a powerful southerly change in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who died from respiratory failure. 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.
Charlie Holt	2017	Charlie Holt, 5, 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.
Akbar Salubiro	March 2017	Akbar Salubiro, 25, 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. A second case happened there the following year, when another reticulated python killed and swallowed a woman in her garden.
Robert Dreyer	10-May-2017	Robert Dreyer, a Florida resident, drowned on his 89th birthday after he crashed his car into a fire hydrant and was then swallowed by the sinkhole created by the broken water line which had fed the hydrant.
Debra Bedard	2 June 2017	Debra Bedard, 58, died after falling from a golf cart onto shards of wine glasses that had broken in her hands in Calaveras County, California.
Rebecca Burger	18-Jun-2017	Rebecca Burger, 33, a 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.
Jasmine Beever	7-Sep-2017	Jasmine Beever, 16, of 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.
Elizabeth Isherwood	September 2017	Elizabeth Isherwood, 60, walked naked into an airing cupboard at the villa 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.
Raildo Matias Santos	22-Oct-2017	Raildo Matias Santos, 49, 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.
Hidr Korkmaz	12-Nov-2017	Hidr Korkmaz, 42, a 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.
Alexander Chechik	27-Nov-2017	Alexander “Sasha” Chechik, of Labinsk, Russia, sent his friend a photograph of a grenade with the pin pulled out while chatting on the Russian social media service VK. Chechik died shortly after as the grenade in his hand exploded. Police ruled it an accident rather than suicide.
Rajesh Maru	28-Jan-2018	Rajesh Maru, 32, died at Nair Hospital in Mumbai after carrying a metal oxygen tank into a room housing an MRI scanner. The magnetic field pulled him in with the tank which pinned his hand and released liquid oxygen. He died of pneumothorax from inhaling liquid oxygen.
Ateef Rafiq	16 March 2018	Ateef Rafiq, 24, 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.
Elaine Herzberg	18-Mar-2018	Elaine Herzberg, 49, of 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.
Kyle Plush	10-Apr-2018	Kyle Plush, 16, died from asphyxia after becoming trapped in his Honda Odyssey, which was in his school’s parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. 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.
Jennifer Riordan	17-Apr-2018	Jennifer Riordan, 43, a passenger 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.
Samen Kondorura	15-Jun-2018	Samen Kondorura, 40, from the North Toraja district of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, was killed after the coffin of his mother fell on him during her funeral. As is tradition, Kondorura and the other pallbearers were carrying the coffin up a bamboo ladder into a temple, when the ladder collapsed beneath them. As everyone fell off, the coffin hit Kondorura in the head. He died on the way to hospital and was buried next to his mother.
Hildegard Whiting	27 July 2018	Hildegard Whiting, 77, 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.
Richard Russell	10-Aug-2018	Richard Russell, 29, 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, killing himself. No one else was injured.
Linda Goldbloom	29 August 2018	Linda Goldbloom, 79, died four days after being hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium. Her death, the second such fatality in Major League Baseball history, was the first in nearly 50 years.
Sam Ballard	October 2018	Sam Ballard, 29, of Sydney, Australia, died from angiostrongyliasis after eating a garden slug as a dare eight years earlier.
Unknown	January 2019	An unknown 54-year-old man from Massachusetts, United States, 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. Liquorice contains glycyrrhizinic acid, which along with its metabolite glycyrrhetinic acid interferes with the body’s potassium levels by mimicking the hormone aldosterone, resulting in excessive excretion of the nutrient in cases of overconsumption, a condition referred to as pseudohyperaldosteronism.
Salvator Disi	10 January 2019	Salvator Disi, 62, 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.
Margaret Maurer	5-Mar-2019	On 5 March 2019, Margaret Maurer, 21, a 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.
Patrick McGuire	Apr-2019	American tourist in Scotland Patrick McGuire, 67, died from positional asphyxia when a 72-kilogram (159 lb) metal garden bench he was sitting on toppled backwards, 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 becoming unstable and there were no appropriate checks to provide a stable hard surface for the benches.
Darren Hickey	5-Apr-2019	On 5 April 2019, Darren Hickey, 51, a 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.
Paul McDonald	17-Apr-2019	Paul McDonald, 47, was attacked and killed by a pet deer, said to be a Wapiti, on his property in north-east Victoria, Australia.
Joemar Jungco	22-Jun-2019	An 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 stuck into a meat grinder.
Elena Struthers-Gardner	Jul-2019	Elena Struthers-Gardner, 60, of Broadstone, Dorset, England, was carrying a mason jar-style drinking glass with a screw-top lid in her kitchen when she collapsed. Its 10-inch (250 mm) stainless steel straw entered her left eye socket and pierced her brain.
Zafer Kuzu	4-Jul-2019	Zafer Kuzu, 24, of Erzurum, Turkey, attempted to escape a community service sentence for inflicting injury by getting himself hospitalized. He asked a friend to shoot him in the back through two pillows to reduce the shot’s power. He was killed and the friend arrested.
Samuela Cirivakayawa	8-Sep-2019	Samuela Cirivakayawa, 40, a Fijian emigrant to Australia, was killed while working as an arborist at Lindfield in the north of Sydney. When his two co-workers left briefly to ask a motorist to move their car, Cirivakayawa, then working alone, was sucked through a woodchipper. Although Cirivakayawa’s ex-wife in Fiji later suggested the incident may have been a complication of depression, a coronial report has not yet been released to the public.
Yulia Sharko	8-Sep-2019	Yulia Sharko, 21, of Žabinka, Belarus, was celebrating her twenty-first 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.
Pamela Kreimeyer	27-Oct-2019	Pamela Kreimeyer, 56, of Marion County, Iowa, was killed during an explosion at a gender reveal party. In an attempt to film a gender reveal worthy of posting online, members of her family filled a steel umbrella stand with gunpowder. Instead of emitting a shower of sparks as intended, the metal pipe failed to contain the overpressure, and the device acted as a pipe bomb instead. Kreimeyer was struck in the head by a metal fragment and was killed instantly.
Michael Kosanovich	7-Dec-2019	Michael Kosanovich, 21, was crushed by a 2002 Lexus IS300s, in South Jamaica, Queens, New York City, after its owner started it by remote control. It rolled forward, and he was pinned between two vehicles. Bystanders tried to push them apart but as they did so, the car rolled forward and crushed him again. Kosanovich was taken to hospital with severe trauma to his torso and legs and died of his injuries on 7 December.
Sergio Millán	14-Jan-2020	Sergio Millán, 59, was alone in his apartment in Torreforta, Tarragona, Spain, when an explosion in a petrochemical plant 3 kilometres (2 mi) away launched a one-ton iron plate into the apartment above him, which caused the ceiling to collapse, killing him.
Valentin Didenko and 2 others	28-Feb-2020	Valentin Didenko, 32, died while celebrating his wife’s birthday in Moscow. Someone poured 25 kilograms (55 lb) of dry ice into the sauna pool, as a result of which a large amount of carbon dioxide was released. Valentin, as well as two other people whose names are not mentioned, died of asphyxia due to lack of oxygen.
Yohanis Budi Santoso	11-Jun-2020	Yohanis Budi Santoso, 21, was strangled in the middle of the road while riding his motorcycle in Surakarta, Indonesia. A 5-metre (16 ft) long, very thin glass kite line that had been stuck on a nearby electrical pole struck his neck and cut his carotid artery. He managed to get up and untangle himself. He was brought to hospital by a passer-by but later pronounced dead on arrival of exsanguination.
Agus Syaiful Rochmad	20-Oct-2020	Agus Syaiful Rochmad, 58, died while he was jogging around his neighbourhood in Trenggalek, Indonesia. A homemade kite spool made of a block of wood slipped and catapulted from a child’s hand during an attempt to retrieve a stuck kite, hitting Rochmad’s right temple and killing him instantly.
Christian Bolok	26-Oct-2020	The lieutenant, who was the police chief of San Jose, Northern Samar, Philippines died during an anti-gambling raid. 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.
Luke Ramone Harper	2-Apr-2021	Luke Ramone Harper, 8, of Ringsend, Dublin, Ireland, died after inhaling helium from a balloon that he placed over his head. The balloon had been bought for his birthday a week prior.
Unknown	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 the town of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Catalonia, Spain. Initial police reports did not suspect foul play. A representative of the local police force 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 sources 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.
Eleanor Skerritt	24-Jul-2021	Eleanor Skerritt, 50, from Margam, Wales, accidentally became stuck in a decking well after apparently slipping or losing her balance while cleaning. Her “loose and ill-fitting” footwear left her “unable to regain her footing” after losing her balance. Her autopsy revealed she died of “positional asphyxia” and “died through misfortune” according to the coroner.
Salman Mirza	Aug-2021	Salman Mirza, an Indian man in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, died after using epoxy resin as a contraceptive instead of a condom, while intoxicated from using the same resin as an inhalant. The man was found unconscious outside a hotel the following morning, but died of multiple organ failure after being hospitalised.
Tony Eyles	9-Sep-2021	Tony Eyles, 42, died at a McDonald’s drive-through in Vancouver, Canada, after partially opening his car door to retrieve a dropped payment card. His car rolled forward and collided with the restaurant’s structure, pinning him between the car door and the vehicle’s frame. Despite attempts to revive the victim, he died on scene.
Halyna Hutchins	21-Oct-2021	Halyna Hutchins, 42, a cinematographer, was working near La Cienega, New Mexico, on the set of the Western film Rust, when actor Alec Baldwin discharged a Pietta .45 Colt revolver used as a prop, fatally wounding her and injuring the film’s director. She died later that day in flight to the hospital in Albuquerque.
Unknown	31-Oct-2021	A 30-year-old Brazilian 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.
Thomas Anthony Mansfield	5-Jan-2022	Thomas Anthony Mansfield, a 29-year-old personal trainer from Colwyn Bay, Wales, died after consuming a drink with too much caffeine powder. Mansfield’s scale, which he was using to measure the powder, could only weigh between 2,000 milligrams (2.0 g) and 5,000 milligrams (5.0 g), causing him to miscalculate and ingest an equivalent of two hundred cups of coffee. Shortly after consuming the drink, he reportedly complained that his heart was beating too fast and began foaming at the mouth minutes later. Paramedics could not save him.
Teddy Balkind	6-Jan-2022	Benjamin Edward “Teddy” Balkind, age 16, was a high school student from Connecticut who died after suffering an injury to his neck during a junior varsity ice hockey game. A hockey player for St. Luke’s School, Balkind died after 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.
Laila Zahrul Maisaroh	14-Jan-2022	Laila Zahrul Maisaroh, a 20-year-old late pregnant Indonesian woman in Banjarmasin, was killed instantly when a concrete barrier from an elevated parking lot fell onto her. A car in the parking lot had collided with the fragile barrier.
Unknown	20-Feb-2022	A 28-year-old man in Rancho Bernardo, San Diego, California is believed to have been using a knife to mix protein powder into a container of water while driving. The man lost control and crashed into a parked car. When he struck the parked car, his car’s airbag propelled the knife into his neck, fatally injuring him. In addition to the two vehicles, four other cars were involved in the accident, with the stabbed man being the only casualty.
Jean Langam	4-Mar-2022	Jean Langam, an 87-year-old British woman, died after being blown over by an HM Coast Guard helicopter landing at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, UK. According to the police, while the woman was on a nearby footpath of the landing site, the downdraft caused her to be blown over, suffering a fatal head injury from striking the pavement. Another woman, also in her 80s, was injured after her car door was blown shut during the incident.
Klil Kimhi	21-Jul-2022	32-year-old Klil Kimhi died after he was sucked to his death when a sinkhole opened under a swimming pool he was in at a house party in Israel.
Unknown	7-Aug-2022	A 65-year-old man was hit in the head by a hammer throw used at a Highland games event in the Netherlands. The thrower lost his balance and the hammer, a metal ball with a stick attached to it, flew over a hedge and struck the man in the head, killing him instantly.
Lloyd and Lillian Curtis	19-Jan-2023	72-year-old Lillian Curtis died after a Denny’s restaurant sign fell on a car she was in with her daughter and husband. Her husband, Lloyd Curtis, died as a result of his injuries a few days later.
Joseph Austin Smith	21-Jan-2023	Joseph Austin Smith, 30, of Wichita, Kansas, was killed in his pickup truck during a hunting trip, when his dog discharged a rifle from the back seat. Smith was sitting in the front passenger seat of his vehicle when his dog “stepped on the rifle”, which pulled the trigger and shot Smith.
Leandro Mathias de Novaes	6-Feb-2023	Leandro Mathias de Novaes, 40, an activist for the Right to keep and bear arms in Brazil, was assisting his mother in the MRI suite of Cura Laboratory in the central region of São Paulo on 16 January while wearing a registered firearm on his waistband. The gun, affected by the magnet, was pulled away from him and subsequently discharged, shooting de Novaes in the stomach. He remained in intensive care until 6 February, when he died of his injuries.
Shivdayal Sharma	19-Apr-2023	Shivdayal Sharma, 82, was reportedly urinating next to a train track in the region of Alwar, India, when a cow was hit by the Vande Bharat express train. The animal was launched 100 feet (30 m) into the air before landing on Sharma, killing him instantly
Norbert Tóth	29-May-2023	Norbert Tóth, a 53-year-old association football player-manager from Somogy County, Hungary, died shortly after having scored a goal himself during a game, likely caused by a heart attack from excitement.

This is a dynamic list of unusual deaths and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness, you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources. While these deaths may be considered unusual, they are relatively rare occurrences compared to more common causes of death, such as diseases, accidents, or natural causes.