December 26 | Jane Creba

May 13, 1990 - December 26, 2005: Age 15

Jane Creba was a 15-year-old high school student. She was out shopping on Boxing Day (December 26, a traditional day for big sales in Canada) with her older sister on a busy street in Toronto. She left her sister for a moment to skip across the street to an athletic wear store when a gunfight erupted. Creba was hit by one bullet that entered and exited her upper torso. She was rushed to the hospital, and died during emergency surgery.

In the confusion after the accident, Creba was the first to be taken to hospital as her injuries were the worst. Her older sister, whom she had left on the other side of the road, did not at first understand that she had been hurt. When she couldn't find Jane, she called her mother, who called police. By the time the family reached the hospital, Jane had died.

The incident is thought to have been related to a street gang feud, and certainly had nothing to do with Jane or with any of the other people injured. Altogether 10 young men, including three teenagers, were charged with murder or manslaughter in relation to Jane's death and the injuries of six others.

Sources: Wikipedia, Globe and Mail

September 19 | James Garfield

November 19, 1831 - September 19, 1881: Age 49

James A. Garfield was the 20th President of the United States. He served as a general for the Union in the Civil War, and was elected President in 1880. He took office on March 4, 1881, but would serve only a little over six months.

A religious fanatic named Charles Junius Guiteau shot him twice as he was walking through a railroad station in Washington. It turned out that Guiteau was upset at not being given the US consulship in Paris despite repeated attempts to apply for the job. He shot Garfield twice, once in the arm and then again somewhere near his spine. The second bullet stayed in his body until he died; all attempts to find it and remove it failed. Alexander Graham Bell even invented a metal detector to try to find it, but the machine was foiled by the metal bed frame and nobody realized the cause of the malfunction. As infection set in, Garfield became sicker and sicker, confined to his bed with fevers and pain. He died of a heart attack and blood poisoning 80 days after he was shot.

People now believe his death was hastened or even precipitated by bad medical care. Several doctors attempted to get the bullet out by sticking their (non-sterile) fingers into the would, and one punctured his liver in the process. It may be that this introduced bacteria deadly enough to kill him.

Guiteau was sentenced to death and hanged the following June.

Source: Wikipedia

September 2 | Russ Columbo

January 14, 1908 - September 2, 1934: Age 26

Russ Columbo, born Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolpho Colombo in New Jersey, was the son of Italian immigrants. By his early 20s he was a famous crooner, on a par with Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee. He was a famous radio presence and beginning to get top billing in films. He is quoted in a press release as saying, "At 26, I find that I have just about everything I want from life and am pretty happy the way things have turned out for me."

On September 2, 1934, still 26 years old, he was visiting a close friend who had a pair of antique dueling pistols. The friend liked to use the pistols to strike matches, but this time trick went disastrously wrong. The pistol used still had some gunpowder and an antique bullet in it. The bullet ricocheted off the desk and hit Columbo in the left eye, lodging in the back of his brain. Although he lost consciousness immediately he lived another six hours.

One of the strangest things about Columbo's death is that his family were able to hide it from his mother for the remaining ten years of her life. She was 68 at the time and had a heart condition; her doctors advised the family not to give her the bad news for fear of sending her off as well. She was told he had married Carole Lombard (who really was his girlfriend) and had left for Europe for a honeymoon. Thus began a bizarre conspiracy of fake postcards and telegrams and an elaborate story about a European tour that kept getting extended. Newspapers that reported Lombard's marriage to Clark Gable were carefully edited before being brought into the home. As Mrs. Colombo was aging, nearly blind, and English was not her first language, the charade seems to have worked. She died in 1944, ten years after her son, without ever having been given the news.

On a completely different note, there is an excellent movie, made in Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, that is) called "Since Otar Left" that tells a similar story about a family keeping the news of a death secret. It's a great film and worth renting if you can find it.

Sources: Classic Images, Wikipedia, Sicilian Culture

Click here to watch and listen to Columbo in Broadway Through A Keyhole, released in 1933