A-2531, a neurocryopreservation member, was declared legally dead at 10:15am (MST) on Tuesday May 6, 2014 and became Alcor’s 124th patient.

Shortly after 9 am local time, Alcor received a call from a member in Alabama claiming to have been shot by an intruder. After immediately calling police and medical services in the area, we stayed on the phone with him as much as he allowed. It soon became apparent that he had not been shot but was intending to shoot himself in the chest and had already taken a large dose of sleeping pills. Clearly deeply distressed emotionally, he called one or two family members to say goodbye, but still wanted Alcor to cryopreserve him. As we soon learned, hearing the police arriving, he cut off our phone call and shot himself before anyone could prevent him.

We immediately contacted an attorney to be ready to file an injunction to try to block the expected autopsy. (This is a powerful reason never to kill yourself, no matter how distressed you are, if you want to be successfully cryopreserved.) With great good fortune, the police and coroner declared the cause of death obvious, took blood samples, and quickly released our member. Two members of Alcor’s response team got on a plane the same afternoon, did a field washout, circulated medications, and performed a neuro separation. The patient arrived at Alcor on Wednesday at 2:10 am. After a longer than usual perfusion for a neuro case, perfusion was completed at 7:32am.