Actor James Ransone, remembered for his role as Ziggy Sobotka in the series The Wire, died at the age of 46 and, according to Los Angeles County coroner authorities, the cause of death was suicide. Ransone died last Friday and his body was found in a shed in the Californian city, where authorities determined that the cause of death was “hanging”.
The details are contained in the official records of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, which also noted that the artist’s body is ready to be released to his family. Ransone was married to Jamie McPhee and was the father of two children; after his death was made public, McPhee shared on his social networks a link to a fundraiser in favor of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), an organization focused on the care and prevention of mental health illnesses.
The career that brought him to fame
James Ransone achieved international recognition for his participation in the second season of The Wire, considered one of the most influential series of contemporary television. In that production, broadcast between 2002 and 2008, Ransone played Ziggy Sobotka, the son of dockworker union leader Frank Sobotka, a role that put him on the radar of critics and viewers worldwide.
Ransone appeared in 12 episodes in 2003, a role that, although brief, left a significant mark within a fiction that brought together an outstanding cast, including Dominic West, Michael Kenneth Williams, Idris Elba, Lance Reddick and Wendell Pierce.
In addition to The Wire, Ransone developed a solid career in television with appearances in other HBO productions such as Generation Kill and Treme, and later in series such as Bosch. His last television appearance was in an episode of the second season of Poker Face, aired in June of this year.
James Ransone’s film career was varied and diverse, with impact roles in films of different genres. Among his best known works are Prom Night (2008), Sinister (2012), Sinister 2 (2015), Tangerine (2015), Mr. Right (2015), It Chapter Two (2019) and The Black Phone (2021). In addition, he had pending the release of Black Phone 2, scheduled for 2025, a project that finally will not arrive with him.
A painful past: abuse and personal consequences
James Ransone was also known for his honesty and openness in talking about his personal experiences, especially in relation to difficult aspects of his past. In 2021, the actor went public that he was a survivor of sexual abuse. Ransone accused his former guardian, Timothy Rualo, of sexually abusing him on several occasions over a six-month period in 1992, when he was 12 years old, at his home in Phoenix, Maryland.
In a lengthy letter posted on Instagram, addressed to her alleged attacker, Ransone recounted traumatic details of that experience: “The most vivid memory I have of the abuse was washing the blood and feces off my sheets after you left. I remember doing it when I was 12 years old because it gave me embarrassed to tell anyone.
The actor linked those experiences to lasting consequences in his personal life, stating that the events influenced the development of addiction problems, including alcoholism and heroin use. Ransone spoke in interviews about his rehabilitation process and said that he managed to stay sober starting in 2006, before working on Generation Kill.
Intention to report and legal closure
Ransone formally reported the sexual abuse allegations to Baltimore County police in March 2020, but, according to an email he received in September of that year, a detective informed him that prosecutors had no interest in pursuing the case. Ultimately, the Baltimore County District Attorney’s Office did not file charges following the investigation, as The Baltimore Sun reported.
A process of recovery and visibility
The actor openly addressed his rehab and described how he managed to quit heroin use around the age of 27, before working on Generation Kill. In a 2016 interview published by Interview Magazine, Ransone recounted part of that process and his personal struggle to move on.
