Double-platinum country music recording star and the oft-tormented Mindy McCready was found dead at her Arkansas property last night, the victim of an apparent suicide. She was 37.
According to a statement released by the Cleburne County Sheriff's office, McCready died of a self-inflected gunshot wound Sunday afternoon on the front porch of her Heber Springs home after years of publicly battling drug and alcohol addiction, legal troubles, and personal setbacks.
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Following the success of her 1996 double-platinum debut record, Ten Thousand Angels, the Fort Myers, Florida-born McCready's musical career began taking a backseat to personal woes. She was arrested for fraudulently obtaining prescription pain pills in 2004, only to violate her probation a year later with a drunk driving charge. Things got worse that summer.
Between 2005 and 2013, NPR reports that McCready had attempted suicide, suffered a drug overdose, and been charged with attempted criminal homicide. She'd also served 60-days in jail and appeared on Celebrity Rehab.
"I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos," she told the AP in 2010 (via NPR). "It's just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that's really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality."
But the chaos reached a crescendo last night when the singer took her own life.
The site of McCready's death was also the scene of longtime boyfriend David Wilson's January 13 suicide, which McCready recently opened up about for an upcoming Dateline special.
"He was my life," McCready said (via E! News). "We were each other's life. There's no way to tell where one of us began and the other ended. We slept together every night holding hands."
McCready is survived by her two sons, ages six and 10 months.
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