Herbert Coward, the actor behind perhaps the creepiest villain in the 1972 film Deliverance, was killed in a car crash earlier this week alongside his girlfriend and two pets.
Coward, who gained fame for playing the Toothless Man in the nightmarish thriller, was pulling out of a doctor’s office Wednesday in Haywood County, North Carolina, when another car struck him, killing him, his girlfriend Bertha Brooks, and his pet squirrel and chihuahua, local authorities said.
The other driver, identified as a 16-year-old, has not been charged, since police determined no crime had been committed in the accident.
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Coward was fondly called “The Squirrel Man” around Haywood County for his penchant of bringing his pet squirrel, Cowgirl, everywhere he went, local newspaper The Mountaineer notes. Both Cowgirl and his chihuahua Little Man were frequently by his side, and tragically also along for the ride that claimed their lives this week.
Coward, 85, famously landed his iconic role in Deliverance after Burt Reynolds saw him performing a shoot-out at the Wild-West themed Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park that sits atop a North Carolina mountain.
In 2014, he told The Mountaineer that Reynolds had advised him to “act real mean” to land the part of the Toothless Man.
“When I met the director, he said he was glad I dressed for the part, so I yelled at him and told him I was wearing my regular clothes and shoved him against the wall real mean,” Coward was quoted saying at the time.
More recently, Coward starred in the 2013 reality show “Hillbilly Blood,” but he preferred to stay in the North Carolina mountains rather than chase Hollywood dreams.
He was reportedly a well-known fixture at his local church—which he attended with his squirrel.
“I remember him and his squirrel sitting up to the front on Sunday at Longs Chapel. He was just a part of things that way,” one woman commented on Facebook in reaction to news of his death.
