In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Shannon Spruill found wrestling fame under the name Daffney Unger, or just Daffney. She differentiated herself from other wrestlers by affecting a gothic, horror-inspired look and personality — known as the Scream Queen, she’d let out blood-curdling yelps during matches fought under the banner of World Championship Wrestling and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling.
In early September 2021, Spruill went live on her Instagram feed. Exhibiting signs of mental health issues, Spruill implored her followers, “Do you guys not understand that I’m all alone? Do you understand that?” The wrestler, believing she suffered from concussion-triggered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), asked that her brain be analyzed after her death. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt my brain. I want to be studied,” she said in the video (via The Sun). “I want future generations to know. Don’t do stupid s*** like me.”
The footage concerned and frightened fans, and police performed a wellness check on the wrestler at her home in Norcross, Georgia. On their second visit on September 2, 2021, they forcefully gained entry with the assistance of a firefighter unit and discovered the wrestler deceased, apparently from suicide. The Gwinnett County medical examiner would later confirm she had died by suicide on the evening of September 1. The wrestler was 46 years old.
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