On October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 music festival on Las Vegas’ Sunset Strip, killing 58 people and left 546 people injured.
There’s a particularly stupid conspiracy theory making the rounds about the subsequent “mysterious deaths” of those who survived the shootings, typified by this idiotic post by one Daisy Luther,
Does it seem mysterious to anyone else that the Las Vegas shooting survivors just keep dropping dead in one way or another? Being a witness seems almost as deadly as being at that ill-fated concert.
. . .
Kymberley Suchomel
First, Kymberley Suchomel, age 28, suddenly died in her sleep about a week after the attack. Now, Suchomel had a pituitary tumor, so it isn’t completely out of the question that she might die. What was so peculiar was the fact that she died after posting a compelling eyewitness report that digresses wildly from the official story. She also talked about forming a group for survivors to discuss what truly happened. But, then she died. You can read her first-hand report here. (It has since been removed from Facebook.) Suchomel left behind a husband and a 3-year-old little girl.
Dennis and Lorraine Carver
The Carvers also narrowly escaped the shooting with their lives, only to die shortly after the ill-fated concert. Two weeks after the massacre, they had a terrible car accident less than a mile from their home. Their Mercedes crashed into the metal gate and brick pillars
Of course what Luther fails to note is that there were 22,000 people in the crowd at the Route 91 music festival that night. The overall per capita number of deaths annually in the United State is 724 per 100,000.
Statistically we could expect 140 or so deaths annually among that crowd from subsequent causes. (Knowing the age distribution of those in attendance would allow us to be more precise and likely lower that number, but alas that is data that no one is ever going to collect).
So, no, it isn’t mysterious at all that a couple months after the Las Vegas shooting that a small number of survivors have died from other causes. In fact, it is exactly what we would expect.