Godzilla vs. Kong actress Kaylee Hottle’s cause of death has been confirmed after she was involved in a single-vehicle collision.
The 18-year-old was one of two passengers in a car that swerved into a culvert at high speed in Frederick, Maryland on Tuesday morning.
She died of multiple blunt force injuries in the crash, the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has now confirmed to Deadline.
The publication also reports that the manner of death is listed as accidental and an initial autopsy was completed Wednesday morning.
Her father, Joshua Hottle, was the first to reveal the news of her death in a 23-minute livestream on Facebook, later confirmed to TMZ, sharing in American Sign Language that she had died after being involved in a car accident in Maryland.
The late actress, who was also deaf, was best known for starring as Jia in two Godzilla films, the first in 2021. She then reprised her role for Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire three years later.
Hottle’s father shared that officials informed him of the crash, and he had flown out to Maryland to retrieve her body after he had been called and notified that her heart stopped on the way to the hospital.
Frederick County Sheriff’s Department previously confirmed in a statement that deputies and the county’s fire and rescue service responded to a fatal single-vehicle collision on Windsor Road in Ijamsville at 2.52am on Tuesday July 21.
The driver of the car, a 1995 Honda Accord, was described as ‘a 19-year-old Frederick man’, with the vehicle travelling off the right side of the two-lane roadway and striking a culvert, possibly at ‘excessive speed’.
While the driver was transported to a local hospital ‘with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening’, the second passenger declined medical treatment at the scene.
The Sun claims that audio from dispatchers revealed first responders ‘scrambled to find an American Sign Language interpreter’ to bring to the scene.
It also reports that both an ambulance and a medevac helicopter were dispatched to the scene to transport the young actress, but she was pronounced dead upon arrival at an area trauma centre.
More to follow.