Walter Jones, ...dies at 76

[littlemissmartypants]

3. It appears that he broke his hip in December 2018.

It also appears that is when his trouble started, to include the reported hip surgery in January of this year. It's not unheard-of and really quite common for a person's health to dramatically decline following a hip fracture while in advanced age. I don't think he was expecting the fracture and rapid health decline.

Hip fractures are associated with significant morbidity, mortality, loss of independence, and financial burden. In usual care, the reported 1-year mortality after sustaining a hip fracture has been estimated to be 14% to 58% (Table 1)The relative risk of mortality in the elderly patient population increases 4% per year. The first year after a hip fracture appears to be the most critical time. A recent meta-analysis revealed that women sustaining a hip fracture had a 5-fold increase and men almost an 8-fold increase in relative likelihood of death within the first 3 months as compared with age- and sex-matched controls.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3597289/

Studies show that delaying surgery after a fracture for just 24 hours increases the chance of complications and death. "The most common scenario is they die of pneumonia after a hip fracture," Moss says.
...Almost 1 out of 10 people over the age of 50 will die within a month of surgery for a broken hip. That rises to 1 in 5 if the patient already has an acute medical problem.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/01/366347840/broken-hips-preventing-a-fall-can-save-your-life