The worst sort of dying is an unintentional death delivered in a dumb act. Meet the sad lesson of Jon-Erik Hexum.
Dead at 26 because of an accidental, self-inflicted, gunshot wound to the head, Jon-Erik Hexum left behind a promising career as an actor and a family that loved him and fans who adored him. He may have had beefcake body, but his talent was real and his voice was deep and vibrating and he had a great comedic timing that made him accessible to both men and women:
Jon-Erik ended his life in a pulsing stream of blood on October 12, 1984. He was shooting a television show called Cover Up and he was bored on the set.
To entertain himself, Jon-Erik pointed a .44 magnum revolver filled with stage blank cartridges at his temple and said, “Let’s see if I’ve got one for me” and pulled the trigger.
The paper wadding in the stage blank exploded from the gun and lodged in Jon-Erik’s head.
A chunk of his skull the size of a quarter blew into his brain. After five hours of surgery doctors declared him dead and his body was placed on life-support for the next four days while his organs were harvested.
The sad lesson of Jon-Erik Hexum is sometimes we are slain by own stupidity.
Even guns loaded with paper wadding can kill and when stupidity meets boredom the result is another kind of paper that selfishly kills the living left behind a little bit each day:
