(L.A.) Anthony Scott, 68, Committed Suicide by Jumping off a Bridge

Case Number: 2012-05503

Los Angeles County is reporting the death of a 68-year-old Caucasian male that occurred in the ocean.

The coroner’s office has identified the man as Anthony Scott.

Manner of Death: Suicide

Cause of Death: Multiple Blunt Force Injuries

RIP ANTHONY SCOTT (June 21, 1944 – August 19, 2012)

This is Tony Scott, the director of such movie classics as Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Days of Thunder (1990), The Last Boy Scout (1991), True Romance (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Enemy of the State (1998), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006), and Unstoppable (2010).

On August 19, 2012, at approximately 12:30 pm PDT, Scott jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in the San Pedro port district of Los Angeles.  Investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division found contact information in a note left in his car, parked on the bridge,  and a note at his office for his family.

 One witness said he did not hesitate before jumping, but another said he looked nervous before climbing a fence, hesitating for two seconds before jumping. He landed beside a tour boat. His body was recovered from the water by the Los Angeles Port Police.

On August 22, Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Ed Winters said the two notes Scott left behind made no mention of any health problems,  but neither the police nor the family disclosed the content of those notes. On 22 October 2012, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office announced the cause of death as “multiple blunt force injuries”. Therapeutic levels of the antidepressant mirtazapine and the sleep aid eszopiclone were in his system at the time of death.

A coroner’s official said Scott “did not have any serious underlying medical conditions” and that there was “no anatomic evidence of neoplasia [cancer] identified”.

In a November 2014 interview with  Variety , Ridley Scott described his brother’s death as “inexplicable”, saying that Tony had been “fighting a lengthy battle with cancer—a diagnosis the family elected to keep private during his treatments and in the immediate wake of his death”, yet mentioning “his recovery”.