The Daily Blog

Isayah Muller, Star Athlete, Killed After NY High School Graduation.

NEW YORK — A high school football star was stabbed and later died just hours after his graduation Tuesday in a fight with Bronx parking attendants over whether something was stolen from his family’s car during the ceremony, police said.

Isayah Muller, 19, a star running back who led his team to the Public Schools Athletic League championship, was rushed to a nearby clinic by his family and girlfriend and was later pronounced dead, said Paul Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman. No arrests have been made but the parking attendants and Muller’s father, Andre, were speaking to officers from the 52 Precinct in the Bronx early Wednesday, Browne said.

The family arrived at the lot on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx at about 9 a.m. and walked over to the campus of Lehman College, where graduation was being held Tuesday for students from Harry S. Truman High School. Following the ceremony, the family headed back to the car, Browne said.

An argument erupted initially between Muller’s father and parking attendants, whom he accused of stealing something from his auto, Browne said. The father noticed the property missing from the car while the family was en route to a celebratory meal Tuesday afternoon on City Island, a fishing hamlet on the northern tip of the Bronx.

Angry over the missing property, Andre Muller turned the car around and headed back to the parking lot, Browne said. The fight broke out and Isayah Muller was stabbed in the chest, though it’s not clear by whom. The father and son ran to the family car where his mother and girlfriend were waiting and they drove him to the clinic. Muller was later transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m., Browne said.

It’s not clear how many attendants were involved in the incident, or who delivered the fatal blow. There was no answer at the garage early Wednesday.

Muller was headed to Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island, in the fall, according to his Facebook page. His Facebook profile showed him to be a popular guy who was hardworking and enjoyed sports.

He was a star running back. He rushed for 285 yards during the high school championship game in November, winning 23-20 over the top-seeded Beach Channel. His performance was the talk of newspapers and television alike. He was revered by his teammates.

“Isayah Muller is the type of player who steps up when the game is on the line,” Truman coach John-James Shepherd told the Daily News of New York after the winning Nov. 28 game. “The more pressure he has, the more comfortable he is.”

Team quarterback Xavier Hamilton told newspapers and blogs that Muller was the team’s go-to guy.

“To him, there’s no such thing as pressure,” Hamilton told ESPN’s high school report. “You put the ball his hands and it’s like he’s in a zone. You look in his eyes and there’s no reflection. He just gets the ball and does what he has to do.”

Muller ran the last five plays of the November game. According to ESPN, “He not only carried the ball, but also his entire team.”

“I really wasn’t tired,” Muller told ESPN. “This is my last game of my high school career. I didn’t want to take one step off that field. I’m still not tired. I could play the whole game all over again.”

Peter Falk, Star of ‘Columbo,’ Dead at 83.

Peter Falk, the Emmy-winning star of ‘Columbo,’ has died. He was 83.

CBS Radio News confirmed via a family spokesperson that Falk died on the evening of June 23.

Falk was best known to audiences as Lt. Columbo in the NBC/ABC police series. The last episode aired on ABC in 2003.

Besides the hit drama, Falk was nominated for two Academy Awards, for 1960’s ‘Murder, Inc.’ and 1961’s ‘Pocketful of Miracles.’ His last credited film role was the 2009 flick ‘American Cowslip’ opposite Cloris Leachman and Diane Ladd.

In 1956, Falk made his Broadway debut in ‘Diary of a Scoundrel.’ Following several films and TV work, Falk won a Tony in 1972 for his performance in ‘The Prisoner of Second Avenue.’ After ‘Columbo,’ Falk is probably best known as the grandfather and narrator of 1987’s ‘The Princess Bride.’

Falk is survived by wife Shera Danese Falk and adopted daughters Jackie and Catherine. After Falk fell ill following a surgical procedure in 2009, Shera Danese released a statement on PeterFalk.com, placing the site on hiatus.

Falk suffered from dementia and late in his life he reportedly could not recall his most famous character, Columbo.

Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band Dead at 69.

Tragic news from E Street: After suffering a severe stroke last Sunday (June 12), legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons — who, for four decades, faithfully served as the face of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band — died on Saturday, June 18. He was 69.

The news was first confirmed by a spokesperson for Springsteen and then through Springsteen himself, via his official website. “His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years,” said Springsteen. “He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music.”

While the E Street Band made a virtual brand-name out of each of the group’s musicians for their respective instrument, Clemons was an obvious go-to for Springsteen, who affectionately referred to him as “Big Man” from the stage, especially when calling out for one of Clemons’ jubilant sax solos, which punctuated Springsteen’s blue-collar rock ‘n’ roll in a way that nothing else could.

News of Clemons’ stroke rippled throughout the music community last Sunday, and as support began to pour in, an email account was even set up so that fans could direct their outpouring of support directly to the Big Man himself. On Tuesday (June 14), Springsteen issued a statement updating fans as to Clemons’ progress. While describing the stroke as “serious,” the Boss went on to say, “While all initial signs are encouraging, Clarence will need much care and support to achieve his potential once again.” Towards the end of the week, however, his condition reportedly began to deteriorate, following two emergency brain surgeries.

The partnership between Springsteen and Clemons has been well documented. While their camaraderie and sense of brotherhood was apparent to anybody who ever watched Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band perform live, the bond was so deep that on the group’s defining ‘Born to Run’ album, Springsteen is famously depicted on the front cover leaning on someone. The back cover reveals that someone to be Clemons.

Clemons had a career outside of the E Street Band too, occasionally appearing in television shows (‘Diff’rent Strokes’), movies (‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’) and touring in Ringo Starr’s All-Star Band among others.

You’re going to be impossible to replace and impossible to forget, Big Man.

Ryan Dunn Dead: ‘Jackass’ Star Dies In Car Crash.

Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of MTV’s “Jackass,” has died in a car crash. He was 34.

NBC Philadelphia reports that Dunn and another passenger died in a 3 a.m crash at Route 322 and New Street in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania.

The news of the death was confirmed by April Margera, mother of “Jackass” star Bam, in an interview with a local radio show. TMZ also confirmed with Margera.

Dunn posted to Twitter a photo of himself drinking with friends just hours before the crash.

A police report indicated that Dunn was most likely speeding in his 2007 Porsche 911 GT3, which was destroyed in the wreck. “Upon arrival, police located one vehicle in the road and in the woods that was fully engulfed in flames,” the report said. “DUI” was not indicated in the report.

So often fearless, Dunn was known for so many stunts, including his parts in crashing golf carts and placing a toy car, in a condom, up his rectum in the original “Jackass” film. His “Jackass” co-star Johnny Knoxville spoke of his devastation at the news on Twitter.

“Today I lost my brother Ryan Dunn. My heart goes out to his family and his beloved Angie. RIP Ryan , I love you buddy. http://say.ly/hUnqQQ,” he wrote.

Reached by RadarOnline.com, April Margera expressed her devastation at the news.

“I have not been able to talk with Bam as he is in Arizona but I cannot believe that his friend is dead – I felt like I lost one of my own sons when I heard that Ryan Dunn had died,” Margera said. “Ryan was a wonderful person he really was the sweetest and nicest guy - he was like my extra son, everybody loved him. He had a longterm girlfriend and she will be absolutely devastated - she has turned off her phone just now. It’s just so sad we cannot believe Ryan has gone - I’m too upset to say anything else just now.”

Carl Gardner, Coasters Frontman and Founder, Dead at 83.

Carl Gardner, lead vocalist and founder of legendary R&B group the Coasters, died Sunday, June 12, of congestive heart failure. The 83-year-old singer (pictured above, far left) had battled Alzheimer’s disease and passed at Florida’s Port St. Lucie Hospice Home, according to a statement made by his wife and manager Veta Gardner.

Best known for ’50s hits such as ‘Yakety Yak,’ ‘Poison Ivy,’ ‘Charlie Brown’ and ‘Searchin’,’ Gardner was born in Tyler, Texas, and formed the group in 1955 with Bobby Nunn. The group scored its first hit, ‘Down in Mexico,’ for AtCo Records in 1956 and went on to record some of the most popular rock and R&B songs of the era.

Though they never received the money that Gardner thought they deserved — he estimated that they sold 137 million records and were owed close to $50 million — the Coasters were covered by both the Beatles and the Grateful Dead early in their careers, inspired the Sly Stone album title ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On,’ and counted a young Jimi Hendrix as a band member for a short period of time.

The sonorous, tenor-voiced front man toured as the group’s lead vocalist for 50 years, though he went into semi-retirement when his son, Carl, Jr., took over the role in 2005.”Sharing my most deepest feelings of the love that my father and I shared — especially when we were on stage together,” Carl, Jr. wrote on the Coasters’ website.

“Carl Gardner was one of the great lead voices of the rock and roll era,” former label mate Sam Moore of Sam and Dave said in a statement.

Though he was unable to regain his lost revenue, Gardner successfully maintained the trademark his group’s name, fighting impostor Coasters for much of his later career. The Coasters were the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.

“At the time they inducted me, I thought it was kind of nice, but all of a sudden I said to myself, I didn’t get paid, so what the hell do I care,” an embittered Gardner said in an interview. “They owe me 50 million dollars. Where’s my money? We had 12-14 gold records. Where’s the money?”

Gardner penned an insightful history of his career ‘Carl Gardner: Yakety Yak I Fought Back — My Life With the Coasters,’ with his wife Veta in 2007. He is survived by Veta and Carl Jr.

Jack Kevorkian Dead: Assisted Suicide Advocate Dies At Age 83.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the controversial assisted suicide advocate, has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.

Kevorkian’s attorney and friend, Mayer Morganroth, told The Associated Press that he died early Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where Kevorkian had been hospitalized for kidney and respiratory problems.

“He says nurses played classical music by Kevorkian’s favorite, Johann Sebastian Bach, before he died,” the AP reports.

An official cause of Kevorkian’s death is not yet known.

Kevorkian, a proponent of “right-to-die” legislation, earned the nickname “Doctor Death” after a string of assisted suicides in the 1990s.

He was released from a Michigan prison in 2007 after serving eight years of a 10 to 15-year sentence for second-degree murder. (Kevorkian was acquitted in three earlier trials; a fourth ended in a mistrial.)

In the 1999 case, Kevorkian administered a deadly combination of drugs to Thomas Youk, who was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, the devastating neurodegenerative disease that can lead to paralysis. It was captured on video and broadcast on “60 Minutes.”

“It’s not necessarily murder,” Kevorkian told Mike Wallace in an interview. “But it doesn’t bother me what you call it. I know what it is.”

Kevorkian, who was trained as medical pathologist but stripped of his medical license, admitted to being present in at least 130 suicides of terminally ill patients between 1990 and 1999. He also developed a suicide machine, which according to WIRED, was essentially an automated drip hooked up to an IV needle that patients could personally trigger.

Many groups and individuals were vehement in their opposition to Kevorkian and his views.

James Arness, Iconic ‘Gunsmoke’ Lawman, Dead at 88.

James Arness, a bigger-than-life actor who kept the peace as Marshal Matt Dillon on ‘Gunsmoke’ for its 20-year run, died Friday of natural causes at his home in Brentwood, Calif., his family told the Los Angeles Times. He was 88.

‘Gunsmoke’ debuted on CBS in 1955 and ran until 1975, in the process making Arness one of the more enduring stars on television and the Matt Dillon character one of its most beloved and trusted.

The 6 foot 7 Arness towered over the cast, including Dillon’s deputy, Chester, played by Dennis Weaver. Other supporting stars included Amanda Blake as Kitty and Milburn Stone as Doc Adams.
By the time Arness got the part of Dillon, he had been a WWII combat veteran and appeared in several films, most notably the science-fiction classics ‘Them!’ and ‘The Thing From Another World,’ in which he played an alien.

The Minneapolis native’s younger brother, actor Peter Graves, who died last October, encouraged him to get into acting. He cut his Western teeth in four John Wayne film, including ‘Hondo’ and ‘Big Jim McLain.’

It was Wayne that recommended Arness for ‘Gunsmoke’ and an on-air endorsement from the film great himself. “I knew there was only one man to play in it, James Arness,” Wayne told viewers (watch video below). “He’s a young fella and may be new to some of you. But I’ve worked with him, and I predict he’ll be a big star. So you might as well get used to him, like you’ve had to get used to me.”

The role of Marshal Dillon proved a complex one and became a focus of the show, but Arness is said to have pushed producers to move the focus off him and onto the large ensemble cast.

When ‘Gunsmoke’ ended in 1975, appeared a string of TV shows including the miniseries ‘How The West Was Won’ and in the early 1980s, turned leading man again in cop drama ‘McClain’s Law.’

He brought Matt Dillon back for five ‘Gunsmoke’ movies starting in 1987’s ‘Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge.’

Arness is survived by his wife, Janet, two sons and six grandchildren.

Cosby Show Actress Clarice Taylor Dies.

Clarice Taylor, who played Bill Cosby’s mother on The Cosby Show, died on Monday at age 93, her rep tells PEOPLE.

She succumbed to heart failure and was surrounded by family when she passed.

Taylor earned an Emmy nomination in 1986 for her recurring role as Dr. Cliff Huxtable’s mother, Anna Huxtable, on the long-running sitcom.

A performer on stage, radio, TV and film for over five decades, the actress was a member of the New York stage group, the Negro Ensemble Company, and helped to pave the way for African-American actors in the early 1960s.

Her own big break came that decade when she landed the role of Harriet, David’s grandmother, on Sesame Street. She also starred alongside Liza Minnelli in 1970’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon and played Grady’s Cousin Emma on Sanford and Son.

Gil Scott-Heron, Voice of Black Protest Culture, Dies at 62.

Gil Scott-Heron, the poet and recording artist whose syncopated spoken style and mordant critiques of politics, racism and mass media in pieces like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” made him a notable voice of black protest culture in the 1970s and an important early influence on hip-hop, died on Friday at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 62 and had been a longtime resident of Harlem.His death was announced in a Twitter message on Friday night by his British publisher, Jamie Byng, and confirmed early Saturday by an American representative of his record label, XL. The cause was not immediately known, although The Associated Press reported that he had become ill after returning from a trip to Europe.

Mr. Scott-Heron often bristled at the suggestion that his work had prefigured rap. “I don’t know if I can take the blame for it,” he said in an interview last year with the music Web site The Daily Swarm. He preferred to call himself a “bluesologist,” drawing on the traditions of blues, jazz and Harlem renaissance poetics.

Yet, along with the work of the Last Poets, a group of black nationalist performance poets who emerged alongside him in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Scott-Heron established much of the attitude and the stylistic vocabulary that would characterize the socially conscious work of early rap groups like Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions. And he has remained part of the DNA of hip-hop by being sampled by stars like Kanye West. “You can go into Ginsberg and the Beat poets and Dylan, but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern word,” Chuck D, the leader of Public Enemy, told The New Yorker in 2010. “He and the Last Poets set the stage for everyone else.”

Mr. Scott-Heron’s career began with a literary rather than a musical bent. He was born in Chicago on April 1, 1949, and reared in Tennessee and New York. His mother was a librarian and an English teacher; his estranged father was a Jamaican soccer player.

In his early teens, Mr. Scott-Heron wrote detective stories, and his work as a writer won him a scholarship to the Fieldston School in the Bronx, where he was one of 5 black students in a class of 100. Following in the footsteps of Langston Hughes, he went to the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and he wrote his first novel at 19, a murder mystery called “The Vulture.” A book of verse, “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox,” and a second novel, “The Nigger Factory,” soon followed.

Working with a college friend, Brian Jackson, Mr. Scott-Heron turned to music in search of a wider audience. His first album, “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox,” was released in 1970 on Flying Dutchman, a small label, and included a live recitation of “Revolution” accompanied by conga and bongo drums. Another version of that piece, recorded with a full band including the jazz bassist Ron Carter, was released on Mr. Scott-Heron’s second album, “Pieces of a Man,” in 1971.

“Revolution” established Mr. Scott-Heron as a rising star of the black cultural left, and its cool, biting ridicule of a nation anesthetized by mass media has resonated with the socially disaffected of various stripes — campus activists, media theorists, coffeehouse poets — for four decades. With sharp, sardonic wit and a barrage of pop-culture references, he derided society’s dominating forces as well as the gullibly dominated:

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theater and will not star Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.

The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, brother.

During the 1970s, Mr. Scott-Heron was seen as a prodigy with significant potential, although he never achieved more than cult popularity. He recorded 13 albums from 1970 to 1982, and was one of the first acts that the music executive Clive Davis signed after starting Arista Records in 1974. In 1979, Mr. Scott-Heron performed at Musicians United for Safe Energy’s “No Nukes” benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden, and in 1985, he appeared on the all-star anti-apartheid album “Sun City.”

But by the mid-1980s, Mr. Scott-Heron had begun to fade, and his recording output slowed to a trickle. In later years, he struggled publicly with addiction. Since 2001, Mr. Scott-Heron had been convicted twice for cocaine possession, and he served a sentence at Rikers Island in New York for parole violation.

Commentators sometimes used Mr. Scott-Heron’s plight as an example of the harshness of New York’s drug laws. Yet his friends were also horrified by his descent. In interviews Mr. Scott-Heron often dodged questions about drugs, but the writer of the New Yorker profile reported witnessing Mr. Scott-Heron’s crack smoking and being so troubled by his own ravaged physical appearance that he avoided mirrors. “Ten to 15 minutes of this, I don’t have pain,” Mr. Scott-Heron said in the article, as he lighted a glass crack pipe.

That image seemed to contrast tragically with Mr. Scott-Heron’s legacy as someone who had once so trenchantly mocked the psychology of addiction. “You keep sayin’ kick it, quit it, kick it quit it!” he said in his 1971 song “Home Is Where the Hatred Is.” “God, did you ever try to turn your sick soul inside out so that the world could watch you die?”

Complete information about Mr. Scott-Heron’s survivors was not immediately available, but Mr. Byng, his publisher, said that they included a half-brother, Denis Scott-Heron; a son, Rumal; and two daughters, Gia Scott-Heron and Che Newton. Mr. Byng added that Mr. Scott-Heron had recently been working on voluminous memoirs, parts of which he hoped to publish soon.

Despite Mr. Scott-Heron’s public problems, he remained an admired figure in music, and he made occasional concert appearances and was sought after as a collaborator. Last year, XL released “I’m New Here,” his first album of new material in 16 years, which was produced by Richard Russell, a British record producer who met Mr. Scott-Heron at Rikers Island in 2006 after writing him a letter.

Reviews for the album inevitably called Mr. Scott-Heron the “godfather of rap,” but he made it clear he had different tastes.

“It’s something that’s aimed at the kids,” he once said. “I have kids, so I listen to it. But I would not say it’s aimed at me. I listen to the jazz station.”

‘Grease’ Actor Jeff Conaway Dead at 60.

‘Grease’ actor Jeff Conaway died Friday at age 60, Radar Online reports and The Hollywood Reporter confirms. The news comes just a day after reports that the star would be taken off life support.

Radar calls it “the end a long, sad road of addiction that made him one of Hollywood’s cautionary tales.” Conaway, known for his roles as Bobby Wheeler on ‘Taxi’ and T-Bird Kenickie in 1978’s iconic ‘Grease,’ was a New York native who battled substance abuse for much of his career.

Conaway was checked into an L.A. hospital on May 11. As of May 26, he was reported to have been experiencing no brain activity. A source told Radar that Conaway’s feeding tube had been removed as of Thursday afternoon and that “Jeff is in no pain whatsoever.”

Conaway rocketed to fame in 1978 with his starring role in ‘Grease’ and in the same year began a three-year run on ‘Taxi.’ Roles dried up in the 1980s as his addictions worsened, but Conaway later found steady work on the sci-fi hit ‘Babylon 5.’

Conaway, who had no children, was married twice — once to Olivia Newton-John’s sister Rona from 1980 to 1985, and again to Kerri Young in 1990.

In 2008, a disheveled and unhealthy Conaway joined celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky’s VH1 show, ‘Celebrity Rehab,’ to address his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Sadly, his sobriety attempt failed and last year, the actor was injured in a fall while under the influence of OxyContin and methadone.

This time, in May of 2011, it was originally reported that Conaway was hospitalized due to a prescription drug overdose, but Pinsky later insisted the star was suffering from pneumonia and sepsis, a dangerous blood infection. Pinsky tweeted on May 21, “We all need to pray for him. Not doing well today suddenly.”

Of his televised problems with addiction, Conaway told THR in 2009, “I think people are just enamored with other people’s problems because they have enough of their own, and they want to stop thinking about their own and think about somebody else’s for a while. I think that’s what television is all about, really.”

Earlier this year, Conaway and on-and-off-again girlfriend Victoria Spinoza filed restraining orders against each other. The night before Conaway was hospitalized, Spinoza paid him a visit that ignited controversy within the star’s family.

Conaway’s sister, Carla Shreve, filed a May 18 restraining order against Spinoza, alleging that after a recent breakup, Conaway feared for his life.

“He had just secured an apartment … and was calling friends and family anxious to start this part of his life without her,” reads Shreve’s restraining order request, obtained by PEOPLE.

The magazine calls Conaway’s rocky relationship with Spinoza “volatile,” noting restraining orders each filed against the other earlier in 2011. Spinoza’s friend and spokesperson, Aubry Fisher, tells PEOPLE Spinoza cared for Conaway for seven years and deems the new restraining order “horrible and wrong.”

“When Vikki went to visit Jeff in the hospital, she sat by his side,” Fisher said, referencing the day before the restraining order went through. “They were in the process of reconciling.”