According to the obituary, Merrill passed away on February 12, and the family wrote the cause of death because at the time, they didn’t know what to write, as an official cause of death was not determined.
Stephanie Vella, Merrill’s fiancee, said that Stephen would have been honored to die by Batman’s uppercut, according to NY Daily News.
Merrill’s close friend, Bradon Moxam, came up with the idea, after he and Merrill’s family were told that they needed to have something written in Merrill’s obituary. Moxm joked and said that they should say the cause of death was an uppercut from Batman. Moxam said everyone in the room laughed and they decided go with that as the cause of death.
The Ledger, where the obituary was published, doesn’t usually publish fictionalized obituaries, but they made an exception and told the newspaper how much it would have meant to them if they did include the Batman bit in the obituary.
Merrill is not only survived by his fiancee, but also his parents, his son Noah and Kimberly, his sister.
