Kinison was working to become clean and sober in the months before his death and he married his girlfriend Malika Souiri in 1992. Just six days after the wedding, Kinison's white Pontiac Firebird Trans Am was struck by a seventeen-year-old drunk driver on US 95, four miles north of where it intersects Interstate 40, near Fort Mohave, Arizona and Needles, California. He was not wearing a seat belt, and his chest struck the steering wheel upon impact. A passerby immediately notified emergency services and attempted CPR, but with no success. Kinison was taken to the Needles Desert Community Hospital but died of his injuries on the way; his wife survived the accident. The other driver received only minor charges because Kinison was found to have very slight traces of cocaine in his bloodstream, though friends and relatives insisted that the comedian was 100% sober at the time of the collision.
