James Ransone, who is best known for his roles in It and The Wire, committed suicide on Dec. 19. He was 46 years old.
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According to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner, Ransone died by hanging, with his place of death listed as “shed.”
Born in 1979, James Ransone’s acting career started in 2001. He took on the role of Ziggy Sobotka in HBO’s hit series The Wire. The actor then starred as adult Eddie Kaspbrak in 2019 It Chapter Two.
Ransone also appeared in other supernatural horror films, including Sinister, Sinister 2, The Black Phone, and The Black Phone 2.
James Ransone is survived by his two children and wife, Jamie McPhee. Following the actor’s death, McPhee posted a fundraiser for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) on her social media profile.
James Ransone Made Headlines After Revealing He Was Sexually Assaulted When He Was a Pre-Teen
In 2021, James Ransone revealed that he was sexually abusedby his math tutor, Tim Rualo, when he was a teenager. At the time of the allegations, Rualo was serving as the department chair of social studies at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County.
He posted a letter he sent to his abuser in a since-deleted Instagram post. “Hey Tim,” the email read, per Page Six. “You may not remember me. My name is James Ransone, but you’d know me as PJ.”
The actor accused Rualo of sexually abusing him numerous times at his childhood home in Phoenix, Maryland, for six months in 1991. Ransone stated that the abuse led to him having a “lifetime of shame and embarrassment.”
“You may be asking yourself, ‘Why come forward now, after 20 years?’” Ransone’s email continued. “Well, there are a few different reasons why. The first being that for a long time, I had to compartmentalize the memory of the abuse you inflicted as a way of getting by. I had to pretend it didn’t happen simply to cope with the world.”
He further pointed out, “And seeing as how my father was abusive nd my mother enabled his behavior, I couldn’t rely on them as figures who would protect me, or at the very least be able to help me process what you did to me.”
The actor reported the allegations to the Baltimore County Police in 2020. However, they didn’t pursue charges following an investigation. A detective even went as far as saying prosecutors “had no interest in pursuing the matter any further.”