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I do. This case made me sick. 
(Article says he died July 15; not sure why it's just now being reported.)
Dave, a respected Las Vegas artist who was badly scarred as a boy when his father tried to burn him to death in Southern California, has died. He was 42
.
Dave, who was born David Rothenberg, died on July 15 at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg said Wednesday.
The cause of his death awaited results of toxicology and other tests and a police investigation, the coroner said.
Dave was a close friend of Michael Jackson, who met him after the boy survived a 1983 attack that left him with burns over 90 percent of his body.
Dave was 6 years old when his father, Charles Rothenberg, gave him a sleeping pill, doused his bed with kerosene and lit it in a Buena Park motel room near Disneyland during a bitter custody fight. The father fled.
The boy underwent numerous skin grafts and was left disfigured but refused to define himself as a victim.
"There is a lot that happens in people's lives, but that doesn't define them as a human being, it makes them stronger," Dave told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2016.
Dave "grabbed hold of life with a sense of urgency and passion," Mike Watkiss, a family friend, told the Orange County Register . "He put people at peace, he brought people together. A guy who had no reason to trust anyone other than his mother was amazingly trusting."
(more)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-dave-dave-dead-20180816-story.html#
(Article says he died July 15; not sure why it's just now being reported.)
Dave, a respected Las Vegas artist who was badly scarred as a boy when his father tried to burn him to death in Southern California, has died. He was 42
.
Dave, who was born David Rothenberg, died on July 15 at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg said Wednesday.
The cause of his death awaited results of toxicology and other tests and a police investigation, the coroner said.
Dave was a close friend of Michael Jackson, who met him after the boy survived a 1983 attack that left him with burns over 90 percent of his body.
Dave was 6 years old when his father, Charles Rothenberg, gave him a sleeping pill, doused his bed with kerosene and lit it in a Buena Park motel room near Disneyland during a bitter custody fight. The father fled.
The boy underwent numerous skin grafts and was left disfigured but refused to define himself as a victim.
"There is a lot that happens in people's lives, but that doesn't define them as a human being, it makes them stronger," Dave told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2016.
Dave "grabbed hold of life with a sense of urgency and passion," Mike Watkiss, a family friend, told the Orange County Register . "He put people at peace, he brought people together. A guy who had no reason to trust anyone other than his mother was amazingly trusting."
(more)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-dave-dave-dead-20180816-story.html#
