In "Ray", how does Ray's brother die?

In "Ray," Ray Charles’s brother George dies by drowning. The film depicts George accidentally falling into a metal washbasin while the young Ray is nearby. Ray does not immediately understand the danger, believing at first that his brother is playing. Their mother discovers George after calling the boys inside for dinner.

This tragedy becomes one of the defining memories in the 2004 biographical film about the musician. Ray’s grief and guilt are closely tied to the movie’s portrayal of his later blindness, although the film dramatizes and compresses parts of his childhood for storytelling purposes.

The scene is based on a real event from Charles’s childhood in 1935. A common mix-up is to assume that Ray’s blindness began immediately after George’s death; in reality, Charles gradually lost his sight and was completely blind by about age seven. The film stars Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles and won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.