Rampart - The Burning Man medical center on the Esplanade.
Rampart - The Burning Man medical center on the Esplanade.
Three men who died at Burning Man this year all had heart disease, the Washoe County Medical Examiner announced this week. The 2026 death toll was unusually high at the festival held annually in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
On Sept. 3, Tshombe Sampson, 62, of Santa Monica collapsed while at Burning Man. Emergency personnel attempted to resuscitate him using CPR, but Sampson died at the scene. The medical examiner attributed his cause of death to hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Sampson was a popular figure on the playa and off; one of eight siblings, he attended Dartmouth for undergraduate studies and received his law degree at Pepperdine. He volunteered legal services free of charge at Burning Man each year.
The day after Sampson’s passing, a 51-year-old man from Truckee began experiencing severe chest pain. He died in an ambulance on the way to a Reno-area hospital. The medical examiner has ruled his death was accidental, a combination of methamphetamine and MDMA toxicity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The medical examiner reported long-term methamphetamine usage was a contributing factor in the man’s death.
On Sept. 5, a 60-year-old man from Yuma, Ariz., was found unresponsive in his trailer. He was declared deceased at the scene. His death has also been ruled accidental, with cocaine and methamphetamine toxicity and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease as factors in his cause of death, the medical examiner said.
Burning Man usually sees, on average, one death per year. None of the three deaths this year were ruled suspicious or involved foul play. In 2025, a man was stabbed to death on the playa, believed to be the first homicide in the festival’s history. That case remains unsolved.
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