#LinkinPark: Lead Singer Chester Bennington Dies In Apparent Suicide

Our hearts are broken 🙁

Chester Bennington, the 41-year-old lead singer for the platinum-selling hard rock band Linkin Park, has died.

Law enforcement authorities responded to call shortly after 9am local time and were conducting a death investigation. He was found dead at a private residence in Palos Verdes Estates in Los Angeles, which law enforcement officials confirmed was the rock star’s home. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed the death and said it was being investigated as an apparent suicide.

Chester Bennington, famed for his piercing scream and tattoos, first shot to fame as a vocalist following the release of Linkin Park’s debut album, “Hybrid Theory”, in 2000, which became a commercial success. The album was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2005, making it the best-selling debut album of the decade, as well as one of the few albums to ever hit that many sales.

Linkin Park’s following studio albums, “Meteora” (2003), “Minutes to Midnight” (2007), “A Thousand Suns” (2010), “Living Things” (2012), and “The Hunting Party” (2014), continued the band’s success.

The band’s most recent album, “One More Light”, dropped in May 2017 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart. The band was on tour and scheduled to play a concert on Thursday night in Mansfield, Massachusetts.

Chester also formed his own band, Dead by Sunrise, as a side project in 2005. The band’s debut album, “Out of Ashes”, was released on October 2009.

However, the singer struggled with drugs and alcohol for years, and had said in the past he had considered committing suicide because he had been sexually abused as a child by an older male friends.

Chester leaves behind his wife Talinda Ann Bentley and 6 children. It is not known as of yet if Linkin Park’s “One More Light” tour, which kicked off in May 2017 and is scheduled to hit over 50 cities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, will be postponed.