Content warning: This story discusses suicide.
It was the news story Jennifer Eckhart’s family never wanted to hear.
The former Fox News staff member was found dead inside the bathroom of her Florida home on Sept. 19, according to a report by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office obtained by E! News. She was 36 years old.
During a press conference on Sept. 21, Sheriff John Budensiek said both the sheriff’s office and the medical examiner’s office have ruled Eckhart’s death a suicide. He noted she had been detained six times over the past year and a half under Florida’s Baker Act, which provides crisis services for individuals with mental illness.
“In the last year and a half, she spent a seven-week period in a mental health facility trying to get help for all her suicidal ideology, the issues that she’s been dealing with in her life, and had been out of that facility for one week,” Budensiek said during the press conference reshared by TC Palm. “And unfortunately, when she came out of that facility, it looks like, based on our investigation, that she had gone off her medication that she was on while she was in that facility.”
Based on the sheriff’s office’s investigation and interviews with family and neighbors, he continued, it appears she “was decompensating.”
Leave a Reply