TOBIAS SALINGER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 02/05/2016 3:00 PM ET
Blond bombshell model Katie May’s fatal stroke happened after she fell during a photo shoot then visited a chiropractor twice, her friends said Friday.
The 34-year-old Playboy and Sports Illustrated vixen known as the “Queen of Snapchat” died in Los Angeles Thursday, three days after suffering a catastrophic stroke, officials in the L.A. County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office confirmed. May’s friends admired both her love for her 7-year-old daughter Mia and her work ethic as a social media sensation and businesswoman, they told the Daily News.
“It is so sudden and so sad and so tragic,” said fellow West Hollywood resident and friend of five years Christina Passanisi. “She was almost like a phenomenon. She was just capable of juggling so many things and doing it effortlessly. She really was just a unique and special individual.”
May tweaked her neck when she tumbled painfully about two weeks ago while posing, said Passanisi, who met May in a gym and later helped her prepare for modelling gigs at her body makeup and spray tanning shop A Bronz Tail.
May told her friends about the neck ache and visited the chiropractor, tweeting last Friday, “Pinched a nerve in my neck on a photoshoot and got adjusted this morning. It really hurts!”
That tweet has been deleted from her account, but she replied to a fan who asked about her health the next day.
“@Ms_katiemay you look amazing my lady. How’s your neck feeling?” the fan tweeted.
She wrote back, “Thanks love! It still hurts, going back to chiropractor tomorrow xoxoxo.”
The American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association found a relationship between chiropractic manipulation of the neck and a type of arterial tear that can lead to strokes in research published in 2014. The study didn’t find a direct cause-and-effect between chiropractic care and strokes but said providers should inform patients before any treatments.
Passanisi said her friend began ailing Monday afternoon, hours after she went back to the chiropractor a second time. May could barely move on the way to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and began vomiting in the waiting room. She recovered from one stroke but suffered another one overnight. By Tuesday afternoon, she was brain dead.
Medical staff took May off life support at 4:44 p.m. Thursday with family and friends present, Passanisi said.
“She really didn’t need to have her neck adjusted, and it killed her,” Passanisi said. “And the scary thing is that the nurse told me it happens all the time.”
Representatives for the hospital declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws.
May’s family told the gossip website TMZ the spill may have torn her carotid artery, which is what doctors said caused her catastrophic stroke. May’s agent at the Genesis Artists Agency in Beverly Hills didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Efforts to reach her relatives were unsuccessful.
Miami-based photographer Michael Tang posted a tribute to May on Instagram with a picture of her wearing a football jersey and pair of pink panties. He told the Daily News he remembers May’s steadfast positive attitude. Tang worked with her for the past year and a half, he said.
“From the first day, she left an impression,” Tang said. “We work with a lot of people and there are just a few people who are able to connect beyond the pictures.”
Playboy magazine called May the Queen of Snapchat because of the frequent postings of her sexy photos on the social media app. She amassed over 1.9 million Instagram followers and later joined sports betting website JetBet as a marketing partner. May’s stunning looks could sometimes distract from her other qualities, Passanisi said.
“That wasn’t all she was, she was so much more than that,” Passanisi said. “Her business understanding drove her to that success.”
May grew up in a small town near Pittsburgh, where she developed her lifelong love of the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins, according to a bio on her website. She later worked as an NFL cheerleader at both the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl.
The single mother recalled in an interview with Huffington Post last month the moment she got the idea that she should pose while running home from taking Mia to school.
“During my jogs I would listen to mantras or spiritual music and meditate and during this time I decided that I was going to do a photo shoot,” she said. “I was going to follow my true desire to be on the other side of the camera, even though I am much older than most of the girls in the industry and really had no experience. Fortunately, that shoot went viral thanks to a feature by Arsenic Magazine. The rest is history.”