🤔What 'tragic accident' caused unexpected death of Liam Coward?

This report was updated Feb 11, 2023 with new information that confirms the cause of death.

Liam Coward has now been put to rest, but questions continue about the incident that led to his death.

“Liam suffered a tragic accident on December 30th; he was admitted to the ICU and placed in a medically induced coma. Devastatingly, Liam’s condition worsened and we lost Liam on December 31st”, a post on Instagram disclosed late on Jan 2.

In the days since the information became public there has been an outpouring of shock, grief, and support from community members, but no further details have been provided about the nature of the incident or injury that required hospitalization leading to a medically-induced coma resulting in death the following day.

Liam Coward’s private funeral was held in his home town of St. Mary on Saturday Jan 7.

There is no known police report and no specific disclosure of cause of death except the Instagram post on the deceased’s own social media account. At the time of publication, the Instagram account has been put into private. Presumably the inner circle of friends and family know what happened and are grieving through it, but in the public domain questions remain about what happened on Dec 30.

Meanwhile, Coward’s name has been picked up by search algorithms and circulated online for reasons that news reports use the phrase “died suddenly”, and he made various outspoken statements about vaccine hesitancy.

But this may be a red herring, obscuring a completely different situation:

Community member’s comments indicate a potential overdose

The first public information of the death was published at about 9pm on Jan 1 when Twitter account @wearymillennial sent a eulogy to @LiamXCoward: “Rest easy, my friend”.

The following morning on Jan 2 at 7:21am, prominent activist Emily Spanton (@WhatDoesntKillU), whom had recently coordinated with Coward in a counterprotest in Welland, made a statement on Twitter:

“Today, I woke up angry: Another friend, a human being who was so loved, lost to government lollygagging on safe supply and decriminalization”.

The statement was a quote tweet of her own tweet from the prior afternoon where she stated: “Heartbroken; 2022 just had to give us one last fuck you.”

These comments appear from this author’s perspective to be a reference to the unexpected death of Liam Coward.

Spanton subsequently retweeted a news article about the community’s outpouring of grief for the unexpected death (“Social justice advocate will be missed in St. Catharines”, Jan 3), and she added no additional comments, implying that her previous comments had been sufficient in expressing her feelings. Therefore there is a continuity between the Jan 2 tweets and the Jan 3 retweet of the news article.

Spanton’s Jan 2 comments pertained to “one last fuck you” in 2022; we learned later on Jan 2 that Coward in hospital on Dec 31, 2022. When the Jan 3 news article was available, Spanton did not provide additional comments that noted it as a second death within days; it is therefore reasonable to perceive the previous comments (“safe supply”) as pertaining to the unexpected death of her friend Liam Coward.

While others were expressing their grief on his unexpected death of, Spanton’s statements pertained to losing a friend to illegal drugs. After arguing a moral equivalency alcohol prohibition, Spanton concludes:

“The only way to stop the deaths is with a regulated pharmaceutical #safesupply”

See screenshots:

A sequence of events that includes a medically induced coma and a rapid deterioration resulting in death would be consistent with a drug overdose. There is no information of police involvement or apparent suspicion of foul play.

Liam Coward was a board member of Positive Living Niagara and StreetWorks Niagara which is directly involved in “harm reduction” services and other advocacy.

Update: Confirmation

At a memorial service on Jan 15, 2023, Liam Coward’s lifepartner Paul Sheppard said:

“As so many who engage in drug use, either recreationally, as was the case here, or locked in addiction, often feel. Liam’s mistake will not define him, nor should it. It is a cautionary tale to everyone else” said Paul Sheppard.

See video clip below:

"As so many who engage in drug use, either recreationally, as was the case here, or locked in addiction, often feel. Liam's mistake will not define him, nor should it. It is a cautionary tale to everyone else" said Paul Sheppard, Liam Coward's life partner. (Jan 14, 2023) https://t.co/8urGhxmZH1 pic.twitter.com/XRB5yj5BAO
— 𝘚𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘳 💬 (@WTFNiagara) February 11, 2023

Another factor: HIV+

According to his profile as a board member of Positive Living Niagara, Liam Coward (28) had been living with HIV since 2015, a fact that has been public since at least he became a board member. It is unclear what implication this might have on his health or what factor it played as a comorbidity in the Dec 30 hospitalization.

“HIV infection is associated with increased risk of WHO‐defined SCD among those with elevated HIV viral load or low CD4 cell counts” (“HIV Infection and the Risk of World Health Organization–Defined Sudden Cardiac Death” Sept 2021.)

Neither community members nor news reports have followed up in this direction or even disclosed this information; it is not seen as relevant given there was an incident on Dec 30 described on Coward’s social media as a “accident”, not a described as cardiac event or a sudden onset of illness.

Rumours swirl online about vaccination

Meanwhile, an internet hivemind has detected the “died suddenly” news story and spent the week absorbing Liam Coward’s name and some of his social media content in hundreds of posts on various platforms.

Coward had been vocally supportive of mass vaccination and mandates, arguing in favor of an OHRC policy that vaccination status is a choice. His pinned tweet on Twitter is a personal advertisement for the monkeypox vaccinations.

“Hot take: if you decline Moderna and are ‘waiting’ for Pfizer you are a piece of garbage. Take the fucking vaccine you are able to get,” Coward tweeted in June 2021. A screenshot of this tweet was paired with news of that he “died suddenly” and amplified by social media posts that included large accounts and even some bots farms, producing thousands of interactions, retweets and additional comments.

Coward published a tweet on Dec 13 indicating he tested positive for COVID-19. On Dec 22 he posted a photo of a theatre performance which he indicated he had attended, so he was well enough for that.

It is unknown what Coward was doing on Dec 30 when the incident described as an “accident” took place.

Liam Coward is known to Niagara Based readers as the municipal advisor and NDP rep to Jennie Stevens who authored a call for “elimination of capitalism” and “adopt Marxist principles into queer theory” and “be prepared to throw bricks” in a Sept 2021 socialist zine. This was an important observation because he was instrumental in the installation of the Progress Pride crosswalk and helped Mayor Sendzik present it on June 2021 and therefore is relevant in understanding the meaningfulness of the icon/symbol of the rainbow crosswalk.

Among his many other contributions to the story of our times, in December he called for a counterprotest of “fascists” who planned to demonstrate at an all-ages drag brunch in Welland; respondents included radical leftist, socialist and antifa accounts.

By coincidence on the day that Coward was in the hospital, this author produced a Twitter thread in review of 2022 that described Coward as an example of a nexus between professional politics and radical revolutionaries.

Late on the next day we learned he had died unexpectedly. When this author noted this news and said “rest in peace” within a few hours Twitter user @ConnorDPeters responded: “I mean this with absolutely no respect but shut the fuck up. You don’t get to attack someone multiple times in a week and then play nice all of a sudden like it didn’t happen.”

A memorial will be held Saturday Jan 14 at Silver Spire United Church.

Liam Coward’s last Twitter post was a retweet of a Dec 24 tweet by Cher.