Featured Image Credit: Jennifer Graylock/FilmMagic
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Phoebe Tonks
As fans continue to mourn the loss of Storage Wars favorite, Darrell Sheets after he tragically took his own life last week, his co-star Rene Nezhoda has offered fresh details about his life in the run up to the devastating loss.
Sheets, 67, was found dead at his home on Wednesday April 22, after suffering from what appeared to be a single self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Detectives looking into the case are exploring all possibilities surrounding the tragedy, including the allegations that Sheets had been cyberbullied in the run up to his death.
It was this alleged bullying that Nezhoda addressed in an interview with Us Weekly.
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"He was impersonating him with phone calls, messages, emails, websites," Nezhoda said of the unnamed social media user behind the campaign of abuse.
"He flat out said, 'I'm gonna ruin you,'" Nezhoda added. "I mean, all you have to do is go to Darrell's last few messages on Facebook.”
The experience is said to have traumatised Sheets so much, he withdrew from social media completely, but not before raising his concerns with his co-stars and close friends.
"He even said, I think on March 9, 'Hey guys, I'm happy. Everything is great — if anything happens to me, look at these people. These are the people,'" Nezhoda claimed. "And then he posted a bunch of messages [about it]. And a month later we find him dead ... I am 50/50 if he even did that [to himself]. I don't know.”
In a Facebook post shared on March 9, Sheets said he had been ‘hacked by a very evil person.’
"The clown. [The posts] are not done by me, they are being done by ... very evil people," he wrote. "I'm not gay. I have made no posts about any children's arcade owner, etc. I'm extremely sorry and sick over this.”
The campaign of alleged terror was so severe, it even prompted Sheets to admit it had ‘ruined him’ and begun to threaten his safety.
"People are showing up to my work and wanting to harm me. The police are aware of this, but [their] hands are tied because Facebook allows this, and it is very bad.”
Unfortunately, Sheets’ alleged experience isn’t unusual to cast members of Storage Wars, with several of his costars also having suffered cyberbullying during and after their time on the show.
Former costar Dave Hester revealed: "We've all had a little bit of that.We've been at this 16, 17 years, and so there's always people [who] want to get on the internet and say rude things, but I don't even pay attention to it.”
“I don't understand cyberbullying because when people have something bad to say, I don't even waste my time. If you wanna support me, that's great. You don't want to support me, that's fine too. It doesn't bother me.”
Nezhoda himself also revealed he had experienced bullying, however he ‘didn't take it that serious, because that's something we all deal with every day. So when we hear that, we take it with a grain of salt.’
This led to him downplaying some of what Sheets was going through, as he admitted: "He did tell me that this person is really doing a lot of stuff, but I just didn't take it as serious, or was as concerned, because it's just part of it.”
An investigation into the star’s death remains ongoing.
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