As viewers continue to grieve the death of Storage Wars standout Darrell Sheets, who died by suicide last week, co-star Rene Nezhoda has shared additional context about what Sheets was dealing with in the period leading up to his passing.
Sheets, 67, was discovered at his home on Wednesday, April 22. Authorities have said he appeared to have died from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Investigators are still working to determine the full circumstances surrounding the death, including claims that Sheets had been targeted online shortly beforehand.
Nezhoda spoke about those allegations in an interview with Us Weekly, describing what he says was a sustained effort by an unnamed social media user.
“He was impersonating him with phone calls, messages, emails, websites,” Nezhoda said of the unnamed social media user behind the campaign of abuse.
“He flat out said, ‘I’m gonna ruin you,'” Nezhoda added. “I mean, all you have to do is go to Darrell’s last few messages on Facebook.”
According to Nezhoda, the situation deeply unsettled Sheets and contributed to him stepping away from social media, though he had reportedly spoken about his concerns with friends and colleagues first.
“He even said, I think on March 9, ‘Hey guys, I’m happy. Everything is great — if anything happens to me, look at these people. These are the people,'” Nezhoda claimed. “And then he posted a bunch of messages [about it]. And a month later we find him dead … I am 50/50 if he even did that [to himself]. I don’t know.”
In a Facebook post dated March 9, Sheets wrote that he believed his account had been compromised by what he described as a malicious individual.
“The clown. [The posts] are not done by me, they are being done by … very evil people,” he wrote. “I’m not gay. I have made no posts about any children’s arcade owner, etc. I’m extremely sorry and sick over this.”
Sheets also indicated that the alleged harassment had escalated to the point where he felt unsafe and said law enforcement had been informed.
“People are showing up to my work and wanting to harm me. The police are aware of this, but [their] hands are tied because Facebook allows this, and it is very bad.”
Nezhoda also suggested that online abuse is something multiple people associated with Storage Wars have faced over the years, both during the show’s run and afterward.
Former co-star Dave Hester said: “We’ve all had a little bit of that.We’ve been at this 16, 17 years, and so there’s always people [who] want to get on the internet and say rude things, but I don’t even pay attention to it.”
“I don’t understand cyberbullying because when people have something bad to say, I don’t even waste my time. If you wanna support me, that’s great. You don’t want to support me, that’s fine too. It doesn’t bother me.”
Nezhoda said he has dealt with negativity online as well, but explained that he didn’t initially grasp how serious Sheets believed the situation to be.
This led to him downplaying some of what Sheets was going through, as he admitted: “He did tell me that this person is really doing a lot of stuff, but I just didn’t take it as serious, or was as concerned, because it’s just part of it.”
Authorities have not concluded their inquiry, and the investigation remains ongoing.
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