LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actress Ann Heche died of inhalation injury and burns after a fiery car crash, and the death has been ruled an accident, according to coroner’s results released Wednesday.
According to Heche, 53, there was also a broken sternum from “blunt force trauma”. information on the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s website.
A full autopsy report is still being completed, the coroner’s office said.
Emmy Award-winning film and television actor was taken off life support on Sunday in a burn center. She was injured when her car jumped a curb and crashed into a home in West Los Angeles on August 5. The car and the house caught fire. Only Heche was injured.
According to a statement released last week on behalf of her family and friends, Heche suffered a “severe anoxic brain injury” caused by a lack of oxygen.
She was declared brain dead but kept on life support until her organs could be donated.
Detectives investigating the crash said drugs were found in a blood sample taken from Heche. However, police dropped their investigation after she was declared brain dead.
The coroner gave August 11 as her date of death.
Hatch first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera Another World in the late 1980s before becoming one of Hollywood’s most popular stars in the late 1990s. She regularly appeared on magazine covers and in big budget movies with actors including Johnny Depp and Harrison Ford.
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