14 DAY TRIAL // In May this year, Mike Tyson’s four-year-old daughter, Exodus, passed away after what police labeled a freak household accident. The former champ issued a press statement shortly after, asking for privacy in such a difficult moment. On a recent Oprah appearance, Tyson showed the world that he was ready to talk for the first time about the incident, but only to say he did not want to know how it happened.
Some feel – and are not shy about saying so in their comments on sites where videos of the Oprah interview are uploaded – that Oprah pushed and crossed certain boundaries when she asked Tyson about the specifics of his daughter’s death. The star, on the other hand, they note, handled himself with the utmost grace and diplomacy when he said he did not even want to know how it happened, because that would send him on a path of rage and destruction he no longer wanted to go down.
“I know, then there might be a blame for it.” Tyson told Oprah, choking and holding back his tears, about what would happen if he ever learned how come Exodus died. “If somebody’s to blame for it, there will be a problem. My first instincts were a lot of rage … [but] I know where that’s going to lead me. I want to win, I’m tired of losing. I want to win now. I’m just fortunate… that I have children by another woman, and we’re just so damn close, and I have this family. That’s my biggest asset.” the former champ added.
He then continued to say that, instead of dwelling on the details of the accident that took the life of his baby girl, he chose to think of Exodus as still alive as an angel. The hurt and the rage of analyzing what went wrong that day when he was not at home and his daughter choked on a cable would be too much to deal with at that point, he explained, and all he wanted to do was to focus on his family and keep it strong.
As we also reported at the time, Exodus was playing alone when she somehow got entangled in the chord of a fitness machine. She was found unresponsive by her nine-year-old brother, who alerted Tyson’s girlfriend, Lakiha Spicer, who called an ambulance. The girl was pronounced dead on the scene. Weeks later, Tyson and Lakiha wedded in a secret Las Vegas ceremony.