Tillim had just completed one of many Savage Rallies 2 weeks before.
The official Savage Garage and Savage Rally Instagram account announced earlier this week that it’s founder and lead, Randy Tillim, AKA Randy ‘Savage’ Tillim, passed away on April 15, 2022.
Tillim was reportedly 52.
Here is the official announcement off his Instagram below.
There are few details, confirmed and unconfirmed, circulating, surrounding the circumstances of Tillim’s death.
Rachel, a member of Savage Garage’s social media team, talked with Youtuber Aaron Palos of Life of Palos and, as you can imagine, Rachel relayed no official specifics.
“I was able to talk to Rachel from the Savage Garage Team,” Palos says. “I confirmed that it was a very unfortunate accident that led to Randy passing away.”
Here’s Palos’s video below.
Another popular and unconfirmed theory making the rounds as to the cause of Tillim’s death comes from AR15.com member USMC2671 from his thread titled, “Randy Tillim of Savage Garage is Dead.”
Redditor /u/Init456 corroborates what USMC2671 theorizes, pointing to police logs from Montgomery County, Maryland from the night of Tillim’s unfortunate passing.
The police incident number allegedly linking to Tillim’s death is, according to Init456, P2200097086
The disposition description, if you scroll right far enough, reads “SUDDENDEATHUNDETER…” which presumably means “sudden death undetermined.”
There are also sound recordings of public dispatch calls between a 911 operator relaying information to police officers about a recent emergency call originating from Tillman’s residence but I’ve decided not to link to it as it reveals Tillman’s address and his wife’s name.
Here’s one quote from the supposed dispatch call below that doesn’t go into too much sensitive information.
911 operator: “Baker 22 and Baker 23, respond to a Priority 4 shooting at [address redacted.] “
According to The Capitol Hill Monitor, a Priority 4 in the State of Maryland means no medical attention is required by responding units. Paired with the word ‘shooting,’ you can draw your own conclusions.
The 911 operator then tells the police officers who called, who the victim is, and where the victim is located.
Although Tillim’s Savage Garage Youtube channel is only two years old, Tillim’s managed to attract over 625,000 subscribers and 85,000,000+ total Youtube video views.
Reading through comments from other popular car Youtuber’s posting about his untimely passing, Tillim’s had a large and positive impact on the car community as a whole and his presence is sorely missed.
“The world has lost a legend; Randy @SavageGarage will never be forgotten,” commented Shmee150 on the Life of Palos’s video update. “He’s one of the kindest, most fun and lovely people I’ve ever been lucky to meet and it’s absolutely devastating to hear the tragic news. Randy has been inspirational to millions and always made sure that everyone around him would have a smile on their face.”
As mentioned, Tillim had just completed one of many of this year’s Savage Rallyies, multi-day, multi-state driving events.
Tillim’s latest Rally was from March 29 to April 3 and saw drivers driving from Austin, TX to Orlando, FL.
As of this writing, Savage Garage’s social media team is still editing and posting footage from said rally.
It’s not clear if Savage Garage’s team will continue to edit and post collected footage, but we’ll find out soon enough.