Even joking about playing Russian roulette can be extremely dangerous, as one up-and-coming young actor demonstrated back in 1984.
When The New York Times reported on the death of 26-year-old Jon-Erik Hexum, they said that he had "inadvertently shot himself in the head," on the set of his television show, "Cover Up." That was just part of the story, and according to UPI, he had been "playing mock Russian roulette" when the prop .44 Magnum fired a blank directly into his skull. According to Find a Grave, Hexum had believed the gun was unloaded when he started playing with it, but when it discharged, it fractured his skull. Witnesses told a slightly different story, and testified that he had loaded the gun with a few blanks himself, then remarked, "Let's see if I've got one for me," before discharging the weapon.
Either way, the results were the same: Dr. David Ditsworth explained, "He had no chance of survival from the outset, as an injury of this magnitude is virtually always fatal." His mother received a wrongful death settlement against 20th Century Fox, and his organs were donated to several different people.
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