Dead Pool 12th June 2022

News and deaths were a bit thin on the ground last week, however, we can have a chuckle at  Bieber and some stupid people who took their own lives in their hands and epically failed. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Dame Paula Rego, 87, Portuguese-British visual artist.  
• Julee Cruise, 65, American singer (“Falling“, “If I Survive“), musician and actress (Twin Peaks), suicide.  
• Matt Zimmerman, 87, Canadian-British actor (Thunderbirds, A Man for All Seasons, Haunted Honeymoon). 

In Other News

Justin Bieber has cancelled a series of shows on his latest tour after a virus caused “full paralysis” on one side of his face. The Canadian ‘popstar’ said he had been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome after a virus had damaged the nerves in his ear. He said he was suffering a “pretty serious” case in a video he posted to his Instagram page. The 28-year-old is currently on his Justice tour in North America and has cancelled performances in Toronto, Washington DC and New York. He said: “It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear in my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis. As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can’t smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move, so there’s full paralysis on this side of my face.” In the three-minute long video he tries to smile, blink and move his face but parts of his face would not react. He said he has been doing facial exercises to recover. Bieber’s last album, Justice, released in March 2021, has been certified platinum in the US, and got to second in the UK album charts. The North America leg of his world tour is due to end in July. “So for those who are frustrated by my cancellations of the next shows, I’m just physically, obviously not able of doing them,” he said. “This is pretty serious as you can see. I wish this wasn’t the case but obviously my body is telling me I gotta slow down. I hope you guys understand, and I’ll be using this time to just rest and relax and get back to 100% so I can do what I was born to do. But in the meantime, this ain’t it. We don’t know how much time it is going to be but it’s going to be OK, I have hope and I trust God. I trust it is all for a reason. I’m not sure what that is right  now but in the meantime I am going to rest.” 

A British base jumper has died after leaping from a drop of almost a kilometre when his parachute failed to open. Dylan Morris Roberts had jumped from an 800m height in the Italian Dolomites but hit the side of a mountain after falling about a quarter of the distance. Local police said the 33-year-old’s parachute did not deploy, but that the accident could have happened because he miscalculated his trajectory. A spokesperson for police in Brento, northern Italy, said: “We received a call from the mountain rescue services informing us of an accident and a crew was sent to the scene. “The body of a British man was recovered and the consulate in Milan was informed. The prosecutor has also been informed and a report will be compiled for the office at a later stage.” Mr Roberts was a trained driving instructor who worked at the British Parachute School in Langar, Nottinghamshire. He had made dozens of jumps and also enjoyed base jumping, an extreme sport that sees people leap off fixed objects and use a parachute to land. Typically, this includes buildings, masts, bridges and cliffs. “Some of the happiest memories I have are teaching people to skydive and see the pure happiness painted in the beaming smiles on their faces,” he wrote on Facebook in 2018. “I’ll always remember them by those happy moments in free fall.” Monte Brento, not far from tourist hotspot Lake Garda, is a popular area for base jumpers. The Foreign Office said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who died in Italy, and are in contact  with local authorities.” 

The Flying Monkeys report that they have bodycam footage of the moment Arizona police officers allegedly stood by as a man begged them for help, before drowning in a lake. Footage and a transcript of the 28th May incident, obtained by the flying monkeys, reveals an officer telling Sean Bickings “I’m not jumping in after you” moments before he died in the water at Tempe Town Lake. Sounds horrific, but read on, you’ll change your mind. The officers had been called to the Elmore Pedestrian Bridge in Tempe just after 5am that morning to a report of a disturbance between a couple. When they arrived on the scene, Mr Bickings, 34, and his wife, who was not named, told officers that no physical fight had taken place. The officers then told the couple that they were running their names through a database to check for any outstanding warrants for their arrests. At that point, Mr Bickings is seen in the bodycam footage telling police he is going “for a swim”. “I’m gonna go for a swim. I’m free to go right?” Mr Bickings says. The 34-year-old then clambers over a metal fence and sits on the edge of the water. The officers stand watching from the water’s edge and tell him he can’t go swimming in the lake.  “You’re not allowed to swim in the lake,” one of the officers tells him. Mr Bickings then jumps into the water below the bridge and starts to swim away. The officers make no movement to retrieve him from the water, simply watching as they discuss “how far” they think he will manage to swim. The bodycam was only released in part by city officials with footage withheld of the specific moment that Mr Bickings drowned. Officials said that the remaining footage was “sensitive” and so a partial written transcript of the bodycam was released instead. In the transcript, the 34-year-old begs the officers to “help me” and repeatedly says that he is “going to drown”. “So what’s your plan right now?” one of the officers asks Mr Bickings. “I’m going to drown,” he replies, according to the transcript. The same officer dismisses his concerns, saying “no, you’re not”. Another officer urges him to “at least go to the pylon and hold on”. “I’m drowning,” Mr Bickings replies. The officer again tells him to “come back over to the pylon”. When the 34-year-old replies “I can’t. I can’t”, the officer refuses to get in the water to help him. “Okay, I’m not jumping in after you,” the officer says. Mr Bickings and his wife beg the officers to do something to save him from drowning. “Please help me. Please, please, please,” begs Mr Bickings. His wife tells the officers “he’s drowning right in front of you and you won’t help”. It is not clear how long Mr Bickings was left to struggle in the water before he disappeared under the surface and drowned. Officials said that at least one of the officers did try to get a boat to help the 34-year-old. His body was eventually recovered from the lake six hours later. The police union added that officers do not receive training in water rescue and do not have equipment to help people who are drowning. However, the incident’s “grief mirrors our community’s grief”, the union said, adding: “No one wanted this incident to end as it did.” The three officers on the scene have been placed on paid administrative leave while an investigation is ongoing. A police union defended the officers’ actions after the video captured nationwide attention on Monday, claiming that they did not have the resources to conduct the rescue. “Attempting such a high-risk rescue could easily result in the death of the person in the water and the officer, who could be pulled down by a struggling adult,” representatives of the Tempe Officers Association said. “Officers are trained to call the Fire Department … or get the Tempe Police boat. That is what officers did here.” So, an idiot drowned, his own wife decided she’d not jump in and help him either, but it is the police’s fault. 

On This Day

• 1817 – The earliest form of bicycle, the dandy horse, is driven by Karl von Drais.
• 1939 – Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures’ Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.
• 1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.
• 2016 – Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; the gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police.

Deaths

• 1980 – Billy Butlin, South African-English businessman, founded Butlins (b. 1899).
• 1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of O. J. Simpson (b. 1959).
• 2003 – Gregory Peck, American actor and political activist (b. 1916).

Last Week’s Birthdays

Shia LaBeouf (36), Peter Dinklage (54), Joshua Jackson (44), Hugh Laurie (63), Adrienne Barbeau (77), Jane Goldman (52), Elizabeth Hurley (57), Bill Burr (54), DJ Qualls (44), Jürgen Prochnow (81), Johnny Depp (59), Natalie Portman (41), Michael J. Fox (61), Eddie Marsan (54), Griffin Dunne (67), Nancy Sinatra (82), Karl Urban (50), Liam Neeson (70), Bill Hader (44), Anna Torv (43), Michael Cera (34), Lance Reddick (60), Helen Baxendale (52), Tom Jones (82), Robert Englund (75), Jason Isaacs (59), Paul Giamatti (55), Sandra Bernhard (67), and Josie Lawrence (63).