Steve from Blues Clues Died in a Car Accident-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Steve Burns from “Blues Clues” has died in a car accident.
The Truth:
The rumor that Steve from Blues Clues died in a car accident is a celebrity death hoax.
The fake news website MSMBC News started the rumor that Steve from Blues Clues died in a car accident at the age of 42. The website (falsely) reported that Steve Burns was killed in a one-vehicle car cash that happened in Pennsylvania:
Burns was pronounced dead at 7:11 p.m. Friday at The Reading Hospital and Medical Center in Reading, Berks County Coroner Randall Wiseman told The Associated Press.
Burns, best known as the original host of the long-running children’s television program Blue’s Clues, suffered severe head trauma and internal injuries after he wrecked a 2014 Dodge Challenger near the community of Shillington.
Pennsylvania Highway Patrol responded to the crash after receiving a 911 call of a vehicle that had overturned on the roadway. Burns was traveling north, toward Reading along Route 422, when the wreck occurred, Wiseman confirmed.
The caller, who was traveling behind Burns at the time of the accident, indicated to the 911 operator that he had seen deer on the roadway just before the accident occurred, which police believe may have been a major factor.
Many fans of the popular children’s show Blue Clues shared the false report of Steve Burns’s death on social media sites. The story had been shared nearly 50,000 times on social media sites within days of publication.
MSMBC News publishes a combination of real and fake news stories, which makes false reports like the one about Steve from Blues Clues dying hard to pinpoint. The site has started other celebrity death hoaxes about Willie Nelson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, just to name a few.
Steve Burns took to Twitter to settle rumors of demise:
Steve from Blues Clues became a household name after the children’s show first aired on Nickelodeon in 1996. Steve walked away from Blues Clues at the peak of the show’s popularity, which has sparked plenty of rumors of his demise over the years.
The earliest rumors about Steve from “Blues Clues” being killed in a car crash date all the way back to the late 1990s, the Cincinnati Inquirer reports:
He walked in the door, and the rumor flew out the window. Steve Burns, host of Nickelodeon’s hugely popular Blue’s Clues,was not dead. Indeed, he was standing right there in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom.
According to rumors on the Internet, Steve Burns had been killed in a car wreck or overdosed on drugs. Where did the rumors come from?
“We have no idea,” says Mr. Burns.
The 25-year-old actor had come to Pasadena last month to accept a children’s TV award from the Television Critics Association. He wore a brown sports coat and a print shirt, not his trademark green striped rugby shirt.
After Steve left Blues Clues he acted in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial and made an appearance in the show “Homicide: Life in the Street” as a man who died in police custody. After that, Steve said that he couldn’t return to on-camera children’s television because he had “confused his audience” by taking on adult-themed roles. Steve did work behind the scenes on a few Blues Clues side project as an executive producer, however.
So, this isn’t the first celebrity death hoax about Steve from Blues Clues, and it probably won’t be the last.