I'm going to chime in briefly here, wasn't going but hey.

1. Saw you on the road, unshifted, not sure what you were doing there figured you might have landed to talk to someone, so I left the road, came down the plains and put you to sleep.
2. Got you spelled up, then vaulted. Changed right to whip and lashed you right after. IIRC, and I may not, you might have fled, at which point I thought you might have been linkdead, but you were dead anyways then from bleeding/poison/plague.
3. After you died, I took four or five very good things, dropped mine in their place. Then I got hit by a maran I think it was, and left near dead. I had intended to sit and wait, as I tend to try and do.

So yes, by the time you were dying I gathered you were link dead, but by then it was much too late to just leave you be. C'est la vie.