Singer, rapper and actor Aaron Carter was found dead at his home in Lancaster, California, law enforcement officials told TMZ on Saturday. Fox 11 reported that Carter’s body was found after a neighbor called paramedics to report a drowning. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
The younger brother of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter was 34.
The Lancaster Sheriff’s Department confirmed to TheWrap that deputies responded to Carter’s home after a 911 call came in at 10:58 a.m., but could not initially confirm that the deceased was Aaron Carter.
There were conflicting reports of whether the singer had been found in his bathtub or in the pool.
Carter was open about his past struggles with addiction. In September, he lost custody of the infant son, Prince, he shares with ex-fiancée Melanie Martin, and he voluntarily checked into rehab for a fifth time in an attempt to regain custody.
Martin claimed Carter had broken three of her ribs during a domestic dispute in February, and Carter later told TMZ that he planned to sue her for defamation.
In September, fans called police to do a welfare check after it appeared he was doing drugs during an Instagram Live, Complex reported at the time. He was asleep when law enforcement arrived and they determined there were no drugs at the scene. Aaron later claimed it had been a joke: “I’m tired of people coming after me so I trolled everybody,” he told TMZ.
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Carter was born on Dec. 7, 1987, in Tampa, Florida, to parents Jane and Robert Gene Carter. Older brother Nick was born seven years earlier in Jamestown, New York.
Aaron began performing at age seven and was nine when he released his self-titled debut album in 1997; It sold a million copies worldwide. His second album, “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It),” tripled that number in U.S. sales. He toured with The Backstreet Boys shortly after the release. His next album, “Oh Aaron,” went platinum in 2001.
He and his four siblings starred in a reality show on E! called “House of Carter,” which ran for eight episodes in 2006 and followed the lives of the musical family as they tried to revive their careers and reconnect as a family. Three years later, Carter appeared on “Dancing With the Stars” and finished in fifth place with his dance pro partner, Karina Smirnoff.
In 2011, Carter went into rehab at the Betty Ford Center, and by the end of that year, he joined the cast of the Off-Broadway production of “The Fantastics.” His music career again took off, touring the U.S. and Canada and eventually a worldwide tour.
By 2017, his healthy took a turn for the worse, causing him to appear on the syndicated talk show “The Doctors” to explain that his emaciated appearance wasn’t because he had cancer or a sexually transmitted disease, but that candida cause severe weakening of his immune system – he had become malnourished and underweight, and dependent on a mixture of benzodiazepines with opiates. He once again admitted himself into rehab.
Last month, he tweeted that he was selling his second home in Lancaster and that 2022 had been “super tough” for him.
