Larry King’s cause of death confirmed, underlying conditions revealed in death certificate
Famous journalist and radio host Larry King suffered from a pair of underlying conditions that factored into his death last month.
The “Larry King Live” host was initially hospitalized back in December at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with COVID-19. His wife, Shawn Southwick King, in January revealed it was not the highly contagious virus however, that killed the media icon at the age of 87.
According to King’s death certificate, obtained by People, he died from sepsis, brought on by two underlying symptoms: late-stage renal failure or kidney failure, and hypoxic respiratory failure, a condition caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood.
King had also been battling a series of other health issues in recent years, including Type 2 diabetes, several heart attacks, and a lung cancer diagnosis in 2017, which was ultimately treated via surgery. In 1987, he underwent quintuple bypass surgery.
Southwick King last month said her husband “was finally ready to go” at the time of his death.
“You know, he never wanted to go, but his sweet little body was just, it had just been hit so many times with so many things, and once we heard the word ‘COVID,’ all of our hearts just sunk,” she told “Entertainment Tonight.”
“But he beat it, you know, he beat it, but it did take its toll, and then the unrelated infection finally is what took him, but boy, he was not gonna go down easily,”
King’s death came five months after the deaths of his children Andy and Chaia, who died less than a month apart last summer.
Andy died suddenly of a heart attack on July 28. He was 65. Chaia died on Aug. 20, shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer. She was 51.
