Post by Jack Lee

Billy Mays, the television pitchman best known for his lively advertising of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died at the age of 50.

"Tampa area media reported that Mays was a passenger on a U.S. Airways flight that made a rough landing on Saturday afternoon at Tampa International Airport, apparently blowing its front tires in an incident that left debris on the runway." -MSNBC

None of the 138 passengers and five crew members were reported to be seriously injured immediately following the incident, but several passengers reported having bumps and bruises from falling objects.

Tampa Bay's Fox television affiliate interviewed Mays after the incident.

"All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping," Mays told Tampa Bay FOX. "It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."

Mays also wrote on his Twitter last night: "Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing. Stuck in the plane on the runway. You can always count on US Air."

Tampa police said Mays was discovered unresponsive by his wife Sunday morning. The local fire rescue crew pronounced him dead at 7:45 am this morning June 28, 2009.

"There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play," stated Lt. Brian Dugan of the Tampa Police Department. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by tomorrow afternoon.

Note from the Post Scripts On-Call Doctor: It is possible May's suffered either a lesion on his brain, unlikely, but possible or a traumatically induced vertebral artery occlusion (A lesion to the vertebral artery) from being struck in the head during the planes landing. My guess is the later.

Often times a blow to the head, even a minor blow, will cause the brain to move just enough to tear the vertebral artery. We call this a hyperextension injury. Previously most doctors accepted this as the most common mechanism of vertebral artery injury. However, recent reports have identified distractive flexion injury as the main cause of this lesion.

In such cases victims can die within hours or few days, depending on the severity of bleeding. Victims experience little or no pain, but become drowsey and unresponsive. Death follows fairly quickly once they are unconscious.

It's always a good idea to monitor crash victims with head injuries very closely for 24 hours after injury. A brain concusion (bruising) sometimes be can detected by unequal pupils.

Any person with head injury that has symptoms of dizziness, pain, drowseyness, vision problems should be checked out immediately by a medical professional, it could be a matter of life or death.