Actress Heche, 53, brain-dead week after L.A. crash
Actress Anne Heche, who had been in a coma since a car crash last week, has been declared brain-dead and is being kept alive on life support to see if her organs are viable for donation, one of her representatives said Friday.
Heche, 53, was critically injured Aug. 5 when she crashed the Mini Cooper she was driving into a home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, authorities said.
She suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and was being treated at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital, according to a statement released on behalf of her family and friends Thursday night.
“It has long been her choice to donate her organs and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable,” the statement said.
The declaration of brain death had come Thursday night, the representative later confirmed. The crash started a fire that took 59 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Heche was the only person in the car, authorities said.
Jeff Lee, a public information officer with the Los Angeles police, said an initial blood sample drawn from Heche at the hospital had revealed “the presence of drugs,” but he did not say what kind. He said a second test was needed to rule out any substances administered by hospital staff but those results could take “weeks.”
In 1991, Heche won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding younger actress in a drama series, for playing good and evil twins on the NBC soap opera Another World. She also starred in several popular films in the late 1990s, including Donnie Brasco, Wag the Dog and Six Days Seven Nights. She also had TV roles and performed on Broadway, starring in Twentieth Century in 2004, for which she received a Tony nomination.