Stuntman for 'The Walking Dead' dies after tragic on-set accident

By Christine Persaud July 14, 2017

walking dead stuntman john bernecker — IMDB

A professional stuntman has died following a tragic accident on the set of the hit AMC series The Walking Dead, Variety reports.

John Bernecker, 33, reportedly fell more than 20 feet off a balcony, directly onto a concrete floor. He was transported to a hospital in Georgia, where the series is filmed, and put on a ventilator. Sadly, the performer succumbed to his injuries, which included blunt force trauma.

Bernecker has performed stunts and fight choreography for a number of films, including The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, parts 1 and 2; The Fate of the Furious; 24: Legacy; and Logan, and has been the stunt double for actors like Tony Goldwyn, Kellan Lutz, and Peter Sarsgaard. In a Tweet posted today, Lutz, for whom Bernecker doubled in Love, Wedding, Marriage, called the stuntman one of the most talented he’s ever worked with.

Actor Jordan Woods-Robinson, who plays Eric Raleigh, the boyfriend of main cast member Aaron (Ross Marquand) on The Walking Dead, also joined the outpouring of condolences on Twitter.

At the time of this writing, it did not appear as though any of the main cast members had yet publicly commented on the news.

Bernecker has also appeared on screen as an actor in a few small roles, including The Last Witch Hunter, Goosebumps, and in the first season of True Detective as a mechanic, in the episode titled “Seeing Things.” He is most recently credited with a role as Federale in Logan, and as a stunt performer in Rampage, Black Panther, Game Night, and Escape Plan 2: Hades. His stunt credits date back to 2009.

While AMC has yet to release a statement following confirmation of Bernecker’s death, the network did confirm the accident yesterday, that Bernecker had suffered “serious injuries,” and that they have temporarily shut down production of the show, which is currently filming its eighth season. SAG-AFTRA is also investigating the accident.

In his résumé, posted on his IMDb page, the athletic Bernecker, who stood 6-foot-1, noted loving martial arts, stunts, and firearms, and being proficient at gymnastics, swimming, track and field, and martial arts.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Christine Persaud

Contributor

Christine has decades of experience in trade and consumer journalism. While she started her career writing exclusively about…

Entertainment

Tales of the Walking Dead enlists Terry Crews and others

Terry Crews looking bemused in an office in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

AMC's The Walking Dead is wrapping up with its final season later this year, but zombies will never die! One of the next iterations of the franchise is the upcoming anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. And the new show has added some very familiar faces to the cast.

Via Deadline, Terry Crews, Parker Posey, Anthony Edwards, Poppy Liu, and Jillian Bell have been lined up to appear in Tales of the Walking Dead season 1. Crews recently costarred in Brooklyn Nine-Nine for eight seasons, in addition to his roles in The Expendables films and hosting America's Got Talent. Posey's credits include Lost in Space and the upcoming HBO Max miniseries The Staircase. Edwards was one of the original stars of ER, and he has supporting roles in the upcoming limited series WeCrashed and Inventing Anna. Liu had a leading role in the sitcom Sunnyside and guest appearances on Better Call Saul and iCarly. Bell has headlined the film Brittney Runs a Marathon and the comedy series Godmothered.

Entertainment

The Walking Dead season 11, part 2 trailer aims to remake the world

The cast of The Walking Dead.

For nearly 12 years, The Walking Dead has been AMC's flagship series. However, the final season is raising questions about whether humanity can survive past the events of the zombie apocalypse. In the first trailer for The Walking Dead season 11, part 2, Norman Reedus' Daryl Dixon makes an impassioned plea to his fellow survivors. Daryl is questioning the need to kill each other in a world already poisoned by death. But a new war among the survivors appears to be inevitable.

Warning, spoilers ahead! AMC is releasing The Walking Dead season 11 in eight-episode installments, in a bid to keep the show around as long as possible. During the first part of the season, Eugene's group made their way to the Commonwealth, a supercolony that resembles life before zombies overran civilization. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth has a darker side that gets explored in the trailer. The Commonwealth provides a good life for anyone in a position of power. But anyone who causes too many waves will be cast out.

Entertainment

The Walking Dead is coming to an end, but its life lessons will stick around

Daryl leading the group in a scene from season 11 of The Walking Dead.

All it took was one brutal scene.

Fans of The Walking Dead had been gearing up for it for months, but when a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire brutally ended the story of one of the show's most beloved characters in October 2016, it became a turning point for both the post-apocalyptic drama's cast of characters and its longtime audience -- forcing many to consider whether the deeper issues explored by the series were worth the show's infamously gory violence.