October 18, 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum dies, 6 days after an accident on the set of the CBS drama Cover-Up, when he was fooling around with a gun. Though it was loaded with blanks, from point-blank range, he never had a chance. The Tenafly, New Jersey native, who had previously starred on the NBC time-travel action-comedy series Voyagers!, was only 26.
It was an unfortunate coincidence. The show's female lead was Jennifer O'Neill, best known as the star of the 1971 film Summer of '42. Two years before Hexum's death, on October 23, 1982, O'Neill accidentally shot herself, and a doctor told me she was lucky to not end up paralyzed.
Hexum was replaced on the show by Scouse-Australian actor Antony Hamilton, who also ended up dying young, of AIDS, in 1995. The show, which didn't have good ratings even before Hexum was killed, was canceled after 1 season.
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October 18, 1984 was a Thursday. The baseball season had ended 4 days earlier, when the Detroit Tigers beat the San Diego Padres in Game 5 to win the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NBA season started 6 days later. There were 4 games in the NHL:
* The Montreal Canadiens and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 3-3 at the Montreal Forum.
* The Hartford Whalers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 7-3 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena). Mark Johnson (of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team) and Bob Crawford each scored 2 goals.
* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Vancouver Canucks, 13-2 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Brian Propp had 3 goals and an assist.
* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Minnesota North Stars, 7-5 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Wayne Gretzky scored a hat trick.
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