We are now up to three untimely deaths. Not necessarily bizarre or unjustified but still premature deaths of cast members in their 30s. The death of Naya Rivera so far seems to be a tragic accident. I feel for her son. How awful to basically see your mother drown.
This is just like the SNL curse. I predict that one day every cast member of the show Glee will one day die. I am confident I will someday be proven correct about both shows.
Sure, everyone dies eventually. But the OP made the point that people don’t typically die in their thirties.
Please note, I’m not trying to speak ill of the dead, but is it a normal thing to go swimming in the middle of a body of water without scuba gear? I would think plain swimming would usually take place near the shore, especially with a small child.
Do boating types do this sort of thing?
Extremely normal, isn’t it? Like, happens thousands of times a day normal?
It’s pretty normal to jump off a boat into the middle of the lake to do some swimming. At least on every lake I’ve been in with relatively warm water.
It seems quite natural to swim off a boat, sure. Obviously you’d stay close to the boat with the kid there, and she protected him with a life jacket.
Her personal history make depression circumstantially plausible. But taking the kid along to witness a suicide and be left abandoned in the boat? People can do stuff like that, but I’d have thought there would have been some prior evidence of that degree of mental disturbance.
Lake Piru apparently has dangerous currents with numerous prior drownings, so accidental drowning is not an unlikely scenario.
I just read this morning that the day they found Naya’s body was the 7th anniversary of Cory Monteith’s (Finn) death.
Posting from a phone so no links sorry.
If I’m interpreting the life table on the wikipedia page correctly 3,600 out of 100,000 Americans die before 40.
So the probability of one person dieing before 40 is 0.036. Note this includes deaths in infancy and childhood so will be higher than you’d expect in a group of adult actors.
The probability of three cast members dieing before 40 out of a group of 20 or so adults is beyond my meager status ability. I guess it would be something like (probability of 1 person dieing cubed) times 18(number of sets of three in 20) which comes out as 0.0008 which I’ll round to about 1 in a thousand. Unlikely but not mind blowing so.
I apologise to any statisticians I’ve offended and anticipate your corrections.
How many Americans out of 100,000 in show business die before the age of 40?
No idea although there seems to be a bit of a spike between 26 and 28.
I really never liked Glee but I watched it every week because I had a (totally age inappropriate) geezer crush on Naya Rivera. I expected her to have a pretty good post Glee career. I am deeply saddened at how she ended.
RIP, Naya.
This alternative source says that at age 20, the odds of dying within the next 20 years is 3%. So your number seems about right.
These were three leading cast members, but it’s a large ensemble cast, so I agree that calling it 3 out of 20 people is probably about right.
The probability of at least 3 deaths out of 20 people would be given by the binomial distribution with p=0.03 and 20 trials, for which the probability of at least three “successes” is about 2%, i.e. 1 in 50 rather than 1 in 1000.
And, of course, we didn’t specify beforehand which famous group of 20 people we’re considering. If there at least 50 roughly similar groups of famous people (surely there are far more), then it’s in line with statistical expectations that one of these groups would by chance have 3 deaths in this age range.
Thanks I knew I’d not used the right approach. Put by a factor of 20. Shame!
So barely remarkable at all really.
I was wondering about this myself. Didn’t they say that the boy was wearing a life jacket, but she wasn’t?
This story just does not smell right. The toxicology report may be interesting.
I’m calling the Gleek Hearse. Because the sight of a blue monkey driving will lighten even the most solemn occasion.
People rarely wear life jackets while going for a swim.
Here is an article about swimming off boats. (Which says that people should wear life jackets to swim, but do adults typically do that?
I agree. It makes perfect sense that the young kid sitting in the boat would be in a life jacket, but she would go for a swim near the boat without. If you’re actively swimming rather than just floating, it’s awkward in a flotation device.
The other fact that some people seem unaware of is that Lake Piru has unexpected currents and whirlpools, and there have been numerous drownings in the past, with some people advocating for warning signs against swimming (but none placed).
I don’t agree, the circumstances with the kid present along with the facts about the lake seem consistent with the most straightforward explanation, an accidental drowning.
They were both in the water. Evidently, the current began to get rough and she managed to push her son back into the boat, but she couldn’t make it. Very tragic.
Should’ve seen this coming.