True crime bestseller Shanna Hogan was playing with her toddler son when she fell and hit her head. She later died in a hospital.
Bestselling true crime author Shanna Hogan has died after falling and hitting her head in a swimming pool while playing with her toddler son, her family announced. Hogan, 38, was well known for penning “Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story.”
The writer and professor at Arizona State University was found unconscious at the bottom of the family's pool by her husband, Matt LaRussa, on Aug. 27. Their 15-month-old son, Zander, was safely out of the water and wearing a life vest.
LaRussa pulled his wife from the pool and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. She was transported to a nearby hospital, where she died on Sept. 1 in the intensive care unit, her family announced. Relatives donated her organs to transplant patients.
“Her light, though, will continue to shine on us all,” Christia Gibbons, Hogan’s former teacher and good friend, posted on Facebook. “We are better people for having had her in our lives.”
Her widower released a statement through Gibbons to the Arizona Republic: “I wanted as much of her in this world as possible, and I can someday meet the recipients.”
Hogan was an award-winning journalist and taught in ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, her alma mater.
A GoFundMe page has been established to help with her medical bills.
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