Desmond “Etika” Amofah, who earned more than 130,000 subscribers on YouTube by reviewing video games, has been found dead, according to an update shared by New York Police Department on Tuesday morning. Amofah was 29-years-old.
His body was found on Monday night in Manhattan’s East River, nearly a week after he went missing and days after police found his cell phone and other belongings on Manhattan Bridge.
We regret to inform that Desmond Amofah aka Etika has been found deceased. https://t.co/sedwZZxglw
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) June 25, 2019
Amofah disappeared last Wednesday, shortly after he posted a troubling YouTube video where he discussed killing himself. The video was removed for violating YouTube’s rules but reposted on the internet afterwards.
“I’m sorry for leaving such a stained legacy,” Amofah said in the video. “I hope that my story maybe helps to make YouTube a better place in the future where people know boundaries and limits and how far things should go.”
“You know I wasn’t suicidal before — I really wasn’t. But one thing I didn’t realize was that the walls were closing around me so fast. I really had no intention of killing myself but I’d always push it too far,” he said. “I guess I am mentally ill.”
Amofah attracted a combined 800,000 fans through his reviews on both YouTube and Twitch, the popular live-streaming site, according to Kotaku. Amofah was particularly fond of Nintendo, making videos where he commented on and played its latest games. He’d increasingly talked about his mental health struggles in the last year and was detained last month in a hospital, after getting into an altercation with a police officer.
On Tuesday, YouTuber Keemstar publicly called for YouTube to restore Amofah’s last video, saying they were his “final words” and “should not be deleted.”
Please @TeamYouTube restore Etika’s “I’m sorry” video. It’s the mans final words. They should not be deleted!
— KEEM 🍿 (@KEEMSTAR) June 25, 2019
Several other fans and creators paid tribute to Etika on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/asteroiddbluess/status/1143582097422147585
Rest well Etika. This is such a heartbreaking thing to see. People don’t understand how important mental health is, especially when you reach that level of popularity. It’s insanely hard to feel treated like a human being at that level, and I wish he had got the help he needed.
— SonicFox (@SonicFox) June 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/flingposs/status/1143586975435362305
https://twitter.com/Riddled_Ox/status/1143588069976739840
I only met Etika once but the man had a legendary personality and you could tell he was born to entertain.
I don’t know how it got to this point but today is a sad fucking day.
— LAZAR (@Lazarbeam) June 25, 2019