Verne Troyer, best known for his role as Mike Myers’ comical sidekick “Mini-Me” in the Austin Powers movie franchise, died in April of suicide by alcohol intoxication, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office reported on Wednesday.
Troyer had a potentially fatal level of alcohol in his system and was saying repeatedly that he wanted to die when he was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital on April 3, according to the coroner’s report.
He died there on April 21 of multiple organ failure.
Photo: AP
The report concluded that Troyer’s death was caused by “sequelae of alcohol intoxication.”
Sequelae is a term defining an action or condition leading to another ailment or, in this case, death.
“Based on the history and circumstances as currently known, the manner of death is suicide,” Deputy Medical Examiner Martina Kennedy wrote in the report.
Troyer, who weighed only 25kg, arrived at the hospital with a blood-alcohol level above 300 milligrams per milliliter, enough to be fatal in some adults.
He had called paramedics to his home, saying repeatedly during his 911 call that he wanted to die.
He would repeat those words again in the hospital’s emergency room, the report said.
Troyer, who stood just 81cm tall, was born with achondroplasia, a genetic condition that limited his height.
He became a star playing Mini-Me to Myers’ Dr Evil and Austin Powers in the 1999 movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and its 2002 sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember.
He also played banker-goblin Griphook in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and appeared in dozens of TV shows, videos and other movies in a career spanning more than 20 years.
After his hospitalization last year, he was candid about his drinking problem, saying he had followed up with a stint at a rehabilitation center.
“As you know, I’ve battled alcohol addiction in the past and while it’s not always been an easy fight, I’m willing to continue my fight day by day,” he told People magazine at the time.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS