The cause of death for So You Think You Can Dance season 4 winner Joshua Allen has officially been revealed after he was struck by a train.
TMZ confirmed on Friday, March 20, that Allen died of blunt force injuries. His death was ruled a suicide by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The outlet broke the news in October 2025 that Allen had died at age 36. His family members asked for “privacy and prayers” as they grieved.
“He didn’t always do things the way that everybody thought he should, but that’s why he was a winner,” Emmanuel Hurd, a friend of the late dancer, told the outlet, noting that Allen was a “very honest, real person.”
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A relative later told TMZ that Allen was struck and killed by a train. He reportedly died in a hospital near his home in Texas one day prior.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, police responded to railroad tracks in late September 2025 near an intersection in south Fort Worth around 1 a.m. local time, where they found an unidentified man who was hit by a train. The victim was reportedly taken to a nearby medical facility.
Allen was only 18 when he competed on SYTYCD as a hip-hop dancer in 2008. He eventually took home the title of America’s Favorite Dancer over runner-up Stephen “tWitch” Boss, who died in 2022 at the age of 40.
“I took a few modern dance classes, ballet classes, because I felt that to be a better dancer I would have to take different classes, and, you know, expand my horizons in the art of dance,” Allen told Entertainment Weekly following his season 4 win. “I didn’t want to audition for the show not knowing anything. Dallas was [early in the audition process], and after I made it to Vegas — there were months before we actually went — I took as many classes as I could.”
Allen explained that while he “wasn’t that technically trained,” he would “try to take classes in the summer.”
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“When it was school time I would take class, run track, play football. I would always just train in the summer,” he said. “So it was never hard training. … I knew what it was, I knew what to do, but I wasn’t trained in it.”
Following his time on the dance competition show, Allen was featured in Step Up 3D in 2010 and the 2011 Footloose remake while continuing to attend national dance conventions. He also took on roles in various commercials and TV shows such as Community, Undateable and American Horror Story.
Years after his SYTYCD win, Allen revealed in a 2013 YouTube interview with Macy Jenkins that he kept “in contact” with the other dancers from the show.
“[We all] have monthly dinners and we all get up together, and just chill if it’s just going out to dinner or going to a theme park,” he said in the video. “Sometimes we work together during conventions, so we’re split apart but we’re never gone from each other. We always come back and reunite. We’ve always made promises when we got off the show, like, ‘We’re always going to keep staying in contact with each other.’”
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