Modified On September 4, 2010
UPDATE: In the comments, reader Spike Rizzo provides the ABC News item, via Associated Press, that confirms Schimmel’s death.
UPDATED: Schimmel’s death was confirmed early this morning via his Jeff Schimmel’s Facebook page. Jeff Schimmel is, according to IMDB, the brother Robert Schimmel. So far, however, there doesn’t seem to be any confirmation elsewhere. As of 9 AM EDT, his Wikipedia page hasn’t been updated to indicate his death. None of the wire services have confirmed the death. One site, Zap2It.com, “confirms” his death, but doesn’t cite a source.
It could be that there’s a lag time between the word getting out from, say, a family member, and the wire services because we’re in the middle of a holiday weekend. But, so far, Facebook seems to be the only source for confirmation of the story. There seems to be a bit of confusion. There are a handful of sites, but they’re not credible media sources.
As soon as AP or a Phoenix or Los Angeles paper reports the death, we’ll link to it.
From our post last night at 9 PM EDT Friday:
We are hearing that Robert Schimmel did not recover from the injuries sustained in a car accident Thursday, August 27.
We are working to confirm the report of his death. We have information from only one source so far.
We’ve noticed the information being posted on various Facebook status reports.
Stay tuned.