Runner Caleb Graves dies after collapsing at finish line of Disneyland half-marathon — leaving chilling video before death
A beloved TikTokker died moments after he finished running Disneyland’s Halloween Half Marathon — less than 24 hours after saying he was “marginally worried” about the event.
Bobby Graves — known by his middle name, “Caleb,” on social media — clutched his chest as he crossed the finish line at the California amusement park’s race around 7 a.m. Sunday, Anaheim police told People.
Graves, 35, collapsed and went into cardiac arrest, Anaheim police Sgt. Matt Sutter said.
Fire and rescue personnel were right there on the scene,” Sutter said, noting that “emergency services could not have been there any faster” to treat the social media star.
Emergency personnel “performed life-saving measures” on Graves, an experienced and avid long-distance runner, before rushing him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
One day before he ran the Disneyland Halloween Half Marathon during last weekend’s Southern California heat wave, Bobby Graves shared his trepidation about the torrid sun and humidity with thousands of his TikTok followers.
Graves, 35, who went by his middle name, Caleb, posted a video September 7 in which he expressed concern about the 90-plus-degree heat and said he was “marginally worried” about running the next morning. Graves rested on a pillow after a 20-minute, early afternoon walk with his dog in the city of Garden Grove in northern Orange County.
“Ten minutes after I came back in, I just passed out,” he said in the post, describing what he felt as “heat exhaustion.”
The experienced long-distance runner and Disney-race enthusiast admitted having “some susceptibility” to high temperatures and said “the UV exposure with the heat in Southern California is its own kind of beast.”
“I really hope I get through the race tomorrow morning,” Graves told his followers.
About 7 a.m. last Sunday, he crossed the finish line in one hour, 56 minutes, then started clutching his chest. A volunteer grabbed him before he fell, Anaheim Police Sgt. Matt Sutter said. About an hour later, Graves, in full cardiac arrest, was pronounced dead at a hospital. The Orange County coroner’s office says it is investigating whether the heat or something else killed the young attorney.
Graves’ death may ultimately be part of a disturbing jump in the number of heat-related deaths, which have doubled across the country in recent years. Just this summer, the hottest on record for about 100 US cities from Maine to California, heat contributed to the deaths of four children who were left in cars in Arizona, Georgia and Nebraska. Another child, a 10-year-old, died of a “heat-related medical event” in July while hiking in an Arizona park. In California’s Death Valley, a motorcyclist died on July 6 from heat exposure on a day the temperature climbed to a record 128 degrees.
“It is troubling that this has not been more top of mind, which could partially be explained by the fact that the increasing trends in heat related deaths have not been clearly identified until now,” said Jeffrey Howard, the lead author of a new study that found a 117% spike in heat-related fatalities over the last 24 years, with at least 21,518 people dying in the US in that time.
“Certainly the risks of these kinds of extreme heat issues are probably going to keep increasing,” said Howard, an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio.