A Fort Worth, Texas man has died of complications from a gunshot wound he suffered over a gambling pot 35 years ago.
According to the Associated Press, Craig Buford, 54, died December 29 of a ruptured colon. The cause of the organ failure: the gunshot wound he thought had healed. The Tarrant County medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide, and now police are combing through old records looking for clues.
"He never had any serious health problems, so I was a little surprised to hear all this homicide business after all these years," his wife, Carolyn Buford, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Tuesday editions.
The medical examiner can rule the death any way he or she sees fit. But I see this as a philosophical problem on the nature of causation, and one not resolved by a legal ruling from a public official trained in medicine. If he lived another fitful 35 years after the shooting, can it really be said to have killed him?
