One of the more colorful characters that has populated my life the last couple of years is a guy my co-workers and I dubbed “the Dancing Man.” During the warmer months, he was a regular fixture on the plaza outside my office, out there at lunchtime just about every day, boogeying until his silk shirt was soaked through with sweat. Most days, he brought his own boombox and played an eclectic mix of rock, funk, and stuff I don’t know how to classify. Every couple of weeks, the plaza plays host to a live act as part of Salt Lake’s Brown Bag Concert Series, and he danced to the bands as well, regardless of who they were or what they played, as long as there was a good beat. He had some slick moves and was enjoyable to watch, but he could also be a bit unnerving with his intensity, and the occasional weird vocalization he would make, little shouts and popping noises. It often seemed as if he were in a trance or some other transcendent state of mind when he danced; as silly as it sounds, I was frequently reminded of the voodoo rituals I’ve seen in movies.

The weirdness ran deeper than his tendency to lose himself in the dance, though. Some of my co-workers interviewed him a while back for an in-house film project, figuring they’d just get something fun about a local eccentric. They got more than they bargained for when he started rambling about vampires and evil spirits and how he knew al-Qaeda had infiltrated a Salt Lake grocery chain and was planning to poison our food supply, but he couldn’t get the FBI to listen to him. After that film made the rounds of the office intranet, everyone’s enthusiasm for the Dancing Man cooled a little. We all wondered what his real story was, if he was dangerously nuts or just a guy with some funny ideas about how the world works.

Sunday afternoon, while I was in Pittsburgh, the Dancing Man — whose real name was Douglas Cottrell — was killed following a harrowing high-speed run from the police. The case has everyone a little baffled, because he wasn’t wanted for anything serious; the officers just wanted to speak to him about a complaint made by someone who claimed that they’d paid Cottrell to do a job and he’d blown off doing it. It appears that he deliberately rammed his car into a semi-truck after racing up and down Parley’s Canyon a couple of times with the cops in pursuit. According to his sister, Cottrell has suffered from schizophrenia most of his life, which no doubt explains his paranoid beliefs about terrorists in the produce section. It maybe also explains his devotion to his lunchtime ritual; maybe he only felt free when he was dancing.

I didn’t know Doug Cottrell as anything other than a funny bit of scenery in my daily routine. But I hope that wherever he is now, there’s a really smokin’ band and that he’s got a good pair of shoes. I can’t speak for everyone else around work, but I, for one, am going to miss his performances…