Warning: This text mentions particulars of an alleged suicide. Please learn with warning.
Born on Nov. 7, 1964, in Maywood, California, Dana Plato was an actress finest recognized for her position because the caring Kimberly Drummond on the favored American sitcom Diff’hire Strokes between 1978 and 1986. Through the late Seventies and early Eighties, Plato was thought-about to be one thing of a teen idol.
Past Diff’hire Strokes, Plato had an in depth filmography that included many different tv and film credit. As per IMDb, her different TV appearances included a 1975 episode of The Six Million Greenback Man, a 1976 episode of Household, a 1978 episode of What Actually Occurred to the Class of ’65?, three episodes of Hi there, Larry, and an episode of The Info of Life in 1979, two episodes of CHiPs in 1979 and 1980, the 1983 tv movie Excessive Faculty U.S.A., a 1974 episode of The Love Boat, and a 1985 episode of Rising Pains.
Her theatrical film credit embody 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic and Return to Boggy Creek, 1978’s California Suite, 1989’s Prime Suspect, and plenty of minor and fewer notable movies.
Tragically, on Might 8, 1999, Plato handed away in Moore, Oklahoma. She was solely 34. However what occurred to convey her life to such a devastatingly untimely finish?
How did Dana Plato die?
In keeping with her IMDb bio (and numerous different sources), Dana Plato handed away from what initially seemed to be an unintended overdose of the painkiller “Loritab.” Nevertheless, 13 days after her dying, on Might 21, 1999, a coroner’s inquest dominated her dying a suicide as a result of great amount of medicine in her physique and her historical past of earlier makes an attempt to take her personal life (as per a now-archived web page of the Chicago Tribune). It was a ruling a number of of her buddies and associates disputed.
On the day she died, Plato had simply completed an interview with Howard Stern (an interview she hoped would revive her stalled profession) when she and her fiancé, her supervisor Robert Menchaca, headed again to California of their Winnebago motor dwelling. The couple stopped at Menchacha’s mother and father’ home in Moore for a Mom’s-Day-weekend go to. After Plato complained of feeling unwell, she took a couple of doses of Lortab, together with the muscle-relaxant carisoprodol, and headed for a nap alongside her fiancé. When he woke up, he discovered her unresponsive subsequent to him.
Plato had struggled with substance abuse for a number of years earlier than her dying. Her struggles had been put all the way down to her problem discovering extra performing work after Diff’hire Strokes ended.
We hope she has now discovered her peace.
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