Popular YouTube Star's Tragic Death at 38 - the King of Random

I’ve never done a video like this but I felt compelled to honor, in some small way, somebody who, as far as I could tell, appeared to be a decent, hard-working, kind human being. A family man who had a curious mind and presented his knowledge to the world though his King of Random YouTube channel. According to reports, he died Monday night in a paragliding accident.

I’ve been a subscriber to his channel for a couple years now and over the years my sons and I took some of the information he presented on his videos and worked on a couple of cool homeschool projects. If you check out his content, it’ll become apparent that he spent a lot of time building his King of Random YouTube that enabled him to build a business and employ more than a dozen people. He managed to accumulate over 11 million subscribers and over 2.5 billion views since he began in 2010.

He was 38 and left behind a wife and four small children.

A posting on his verified Instagram account Tuesday stated: “It is with great sadness to inform everyone that Grant Thompson passed away last night. Grant had great love and appreciation for his fans. We invite you to share your thoughts for Grant and the channel in the comments. Please do a random act of love or kindness today in honor of The King of Random. Grant’s legacy will live on in the channel and the global community he created.”

Thompson lived in Hurricane, Utah, and according to the St. George News authorities they received a missing persons report after Thompson didn’t return from a paragliding trip near Honeymoon Trail.

Thompson reportedly had a GPS device on him which was used to locate his body shortly after midnight on Tuesday.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office posted on their Facebook page that they were able to recover paragliding equipment along with a video recording device and are reviewing the video to determine factors which led to the aircraft crash. Their post states…

On July 29, 2019 the St George Emergency Dispatch Center received a report of an overdue paraglider. The pilot was reported as leaving the Dixie Springs subdivision near Sand Hollow State Park. The caller reported the pilot was overdue by one hour and they were unable to reach him on his cellular phone. Officers with the Hurricane Police Department and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initially responded to the incident based on where the pilot departed from. The caller was able to provide the last known GPS coordinates as of 9:00 pm that evening. Volunteers with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office Search & Rescue and a Life flight helicopter were requested to assist in locating the pilot. Dispatchers were able to obtain an updated GPS location of the pilot’s cell phone. As the helicopter approached the area, they were able to locate the pilot’s body. The Life flight crew landed in the area to assess the pilot’s condition. Unfortunately, the pilot was determined to be deceased. The pilot is currently being identified as a 38 year old male, Hurricane resident. The name is currently being withheld to allow notification of necessary family members.

He created the channel in 2010 to showcase his interest in how things work.

Thompson told Mediakix in 2017 that he was bullied as a child, became an airline pilot for 11 years and semi retired after he began successfully investing in real estate. Thompson said.

“Then I just started tinkering and learning about how the world works, which was inspired kind of by the idea of the Great Recession from the housing collapse. I was learning about things,” “I started making videos on YouTube showing people what I was tinkering with and what I was coming up with. It turned into a big enough movement that I shut down my real estate business, I quit the airlines, and now it’s all YouTube.”

In January of 2018, after taking some time off, he uploaded this video entitled, “What Happened to Grant? EXPLAINED!”, Where he talks about the trouble that YouTubers are having to wade through as Google continues to negatively affect a creator’s ability to make a living for the time invested in creating videos. Here’s a short clip. (clip)

YouTube tweeted, “We’re deeply saddened to learn of the tragic loss of Grant Thompson, a gifted, passionate and endlessly curious creator, we send our deepest condolences to his loving family, The King of Random team and fans.”

The bottom line here is that this is tragic, life is short and about the only thing which matters is treating people the way you wanna be treated, loving your family, raising your kids the right way and making a lasting, positive impact on the world before you leave. From everything I can tell about this guy…he checked all those boxes. I’ll leave his social media links in the description if you want to show support for his family. I’ll see you guys in the next video.