{"id":149228,"date":"2026-03-01T22:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149228\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T22:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:05:07","slug":"eugene-thomas-king-jr-who-held-gun-to-paula-deens-head-found-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149228\/","title":{"rendered":"Eugene Thomas King Jr., Who Held Gun to Paula Deen&#8217;s Head, Found Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                          Paula Deen<br \/>\n                          Man Who Robbed Her at Gunpoint Found Dead in NYC<\/p>\n<p>\n                                                                        Published<br \/>\n                              March 1, 2026<br \/>\n                            12:10 PM PST<br \/>\n                                                                      |<br \/>\n                                                                Updated<br \/>\n                                  March 1, 2026<br \/>\n                                1:21 PM PST\n                                    <\/p>\n<p>                  <a class=\"js-click-image js-track-link image-lightbox-preview\" data-node-ref=\"tmz:image-asset:image_jpg_20260301_d90c0ec95b7f40a9bc974358bdd8fa0d\" data-container-ref=\"tmz:article:4cde62bb-f8f1-41ca-b440-9e5153de1f7e\" data-context=\"{&quot;section&quot;:&quot;permalink&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;image&quot;}\"><\/p>\n<p>                          <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d90c0ec95b7f40a9bc974358bdd8fa0d_md.jpg\" alt=\"paula-deen-main-getty-1\" width=\"728\" height=\"546\" class=\"img-fluid image-block__img-fluid img-aspect-auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>1:11 PM PT &#8212; The NYPD tells TMZ &#8230; cops responded to the 911 call just after 5 PM on Thursday &#8212; and found King unconscious. He was unresponsive, and EMS pronounced him dead at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is looking into his cause of death.<\/p>\n<p>Eugene Thomas King Jr. &#8212; the convicted bank robber who held a gun to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/people\/paula-deen\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paula Deen<\/a>&#8216;s temple in 1987 &#8212; has been found dead in New York City &#8230; TMZ has learned.<\/p>\n<p>Family sources tell TMZ &#8230; King was found dead Thursday inside his Brooklyn apartment. It&#8217;s currently unclear what caused his death.<\/p>\n<p>                  <a class=\"js-click-image js-track-link image-lightbox-preview\" data-node-ref=\"tmz:image-asset:image_jpg_20260301_9068a370a3894b25acae49cc09511b1c\" data-container-ref=\"tmz:article:4cde62bb-f8f1-41ca-b440-9e5153de1f7e\" data-context=\"{&quot;section&quot;:&quot;permalink&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;image&quot;}\"><\/p>\n<p>                          <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/9068a370a3894b25acae49cc09511b1c_md.jpg\" alt=\"paula-deen-sub-getty-2\" width=\"728\" height=\"546\" class=\"img-fluid image-block__img-fluid img-aspect-auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve reached out to the NYPD, FDNY and the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner for more.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"continued\" class=\"continued-anchor\"\/><\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t hear much about King years after his armed robbery of Deen &#8212; who worked as a bank teller at the time. According to Deen, King pressed a gun to her temple during the terrifying encounter. He was later convicted of the crime.<\/p>\n<p>Years later, during the fallout over Deen&#8217;s admission that she used racial language while recounting the traumatic incident, King unexpectedly entered the public conversation. In a 2013 interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insideedition.com\/6579-paula-deens-robber-comes-to-her-defense\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Inside Edition<\/a>, King apologized to Deen for the fear he caused her and expressed regret for his actions.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, he acknowledged the robbery and said he was sorry for putting her through such a frightening ordeal. King had largely remained out of the spotlight in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paula Deen Man Who Robbed Her at Gunpoint Found Dead in NYC Published March 1, 2026 12:10 PM&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-149228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}