Photo composite by The Daily Beast/Alamy/Instagram
The death of ALF star Benji Gregory in Peoria, Arizona, this past summer has officially been ruled an accident by the Maricopa County medical examiner. The former child actor, who was found unconscious in his car June 13, died as a result of “environmental heat exposure in the setting of hepatic cirrhosis,” the examiner determined—medical terminology which boils down to a combination of heatstroke and existing liver issues. (Temperatures reached 109 degrees in Arizona on the day of Gregory’s death.) Gregory’s sister, Rebecca Hertzberg-Pfaffinger, told TMZ in July that her brother had been suffering from bipolar disorder, depression and a sleep disorder that would keep him up for days at a time, adding that she believed he fell asleep in his car and never awoke. Gregory was known for his role on ALF as Brian Tanner, the middle child of the family that takes in the wise-cracking titular alien life form. The sitcom ran for four seasons between 1986 and 1990 on NBC; a reboot was announced by Warner Bros. in 2018 but was later canceled after it failed to find a home—at least on Earth.
