Biography

September 3, 1982 · Barrie, Ontario, Canada

January 19, 2012 · Salt Lake City, Utah, USA (injuries from skiing accident)

Pro freestyle skier and 4-time Winter X Games gold medalist.

On January 10, 2012, Burke was seriously injured while training on the Park City Mountain Resort Eagle superpipe in Park City, Utah. This is the same superpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce was seriously injured in 2009. Onlookers reported that Burke had completed a trick fairly well yet fell onto her head, and the accident did not appear to be very severe. Moments later, however, she went into cardiac arrest while still on the ski slope, making her chance of survival extremely low. She was resuscitated and airlifted to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, where she was reported to be in a coma. The following day, she underwent neurosurgery to repair a tear in a vertebral artery. She succumbed to her injuries on January 19, 2012. Per her publicist's words, Burke's injuries had resulted in "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest". Her organs and tissues were donated as she requested before her death.

Suffered a ruptured vertebral artery on 10 January after she fell during a training run in the super pipe.