From Deseret News archives:

Missionary work can be deadly

Toll revised upward; most in the LDS faith die from accidents

Published: Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006 2:47 p.m. MST
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
The Deseret Morning News said this week that the 177 Christian missionaries it had identified through Internet searches as killed during the past seven years was likely only the tip of the iceberg. It was.

DNews graphic

Download missionary death listing

Requires Adobe Acrobat.

Readers quickly identified 10 additional missionaries who had been killed in that time — six LDS and four Baptists. And, tragically, two more LDS missionaries were killed late Thursday in a head-on auto collision in New Zealand, Elders Bradley Isle, 20, of Las Vegas, and Jonathan Talmadge, 21, of Willamina, Ore.

Story continues below
Even with those updates, the bottom-line conclusion from statistics is the same: Most LDS missionaries killed in recent years died from accidents, not murders. The opposite appears to be true for missionaries of most other Christian faiths, where almost all of their reported deaths have been murders.

The deaths of the additional missionaries now identified sometimes had not been reported by news media that are available on the Internet or that are explored by major search engines, or stories about them did not include key words used in earlier searches such as "killed" or "murder."

The six additional LDS missionaries killed in past years identified now all died in accidents.

They are Clark Henry Pixton, killed by a fall in the Ukraine in 2000; Jonathan Reed Thomas, hit by a train in Argentina in 2001; Limuula Leauanae, killed in an auto accident in Samoa in 2002; Gregory Scott Johnson, electrocuted accidentally in Mexico in 2002; Michael Joshua Bent, drowned in Samoa flooding in 2003; and Joel Galindo Flores, struck by a truck in Mexico in November 2005.

The four additional Baptist missionaries identified drowned during a beach trip in Mexico in 1999 from a strong ocean undertow: Gary and Carla Sloan, John Weems and Joy Murphy.

Recent comments

mormons rokk and im glad most of tha mormon deaths were accidents

marissa | May 21, 2008 at 10:47 a.m.

previousnext

Latest comments

no style points. A win is a win and they needed it.

who can shoot. Tonight AK shot well from the wing. That was crucial as NY...

The Utes have reason to be optimistic... except that it's THIS YEAR'S TEAM...

Away in a manger

I dislike a theocracy as much as the next guy but the constitution says...

House passes health care bill

@Anonymous 10:04 p.m.: "Someone remind me why congress is exempt from...

TCU gets first sellout in 3 years

and big purple Horned Frogs! Both have it in for uties,

I'm sure everyone would have been more comfortable if the police had done a...

Letters: Immigrants need aid

The letter says that immigrants need aid. Yep, they do. However, so do...

U. hopes to keep clicking

Ute butt kicking coming this week! OUCH, and then out of the polls for good...

In my opinion, prison sentences are way too long. Prison sentences should be...

Advertisements
Advertisement