Two Orange County sheriff’s office deputies told friends that Bob Saget had been found dead in a hotel room before his wife was formally notified, breaking department protocol.
The deputies, Emiliano Silva and Steven Reed, have been disciplined for “violating the department’s dissemination of information directive,” the Daily News confirmed Sunday.
The details of their discipline were not reported and a spokesman for the sheriff’s office did not answer questions from The News.
Barely half an hour after Silva responded to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, his brother tweeted “RIP Bob Saget,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Silva told police that he wasn’t familiar with Saget and only began talking to his brother after another officer clued him into the 65-year-old actor’s resumé.
Still, he told investigators, he had “no ill intent” in gossiping to his brother before official notifications.
Bob Saget died in January. (Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP) Reed, who was off-duty that night, also told friends about the comedian’s death after being tipped off by one of the officers in the room. “Someone just said we got a call ... that Bob Saget died,” Reed texted a friend who had seen the tweet from Silva’s brother, then continued to update the group chat as he got more news from other colleagues, according to the internal investigation obtained by The News.
Several of Reed’s friends had attended Saget’s show the night before and texted about saving their tickets because it was his last.
Both men were spreading the news before Saget’s wife, Kelly Rizzo, was even told.
The “Full House” star was found unresponsive in his hotel room on Jan. 9 after returning there from a standup set the night before.
An autopsy confirmed that he died from a brain bleed after hitting his head and falling asleep. “My dad wasn’t just my dad, he was my best friend.
He wore his heart.
He didn’t hide it; he wasn’t afraid of love.
My dad simply wanted to share laughter and love with this world.
I have noticed how scary it can be to love that big, to open so fully.
It can be easier to be angry, fearful, negative.
Maybe because love has an infinite quality, it is boundless,” Saget’s daughter, Lara, wrote on Instagram Sunday for Father’s Day. “My dad taught me that it doesn’t matter what life throws, how hard, how painful, how seemingly impossible.
It doesn’t stop that love.
He chose love, always.
I commit to doing the same.
The love is right here.
And it’s my responsibility to give it to myself and to share by living in the love.” Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News source