Caitlyn Jenner has spoken out about her manager and close friend Sophia Hutchins’s tragic death.
Hutchins, who had managed Jenner’s business affairs since 2017, died following an ATV accident near the reality star’s home in Malibu on July 2.
TMZ reported that Hutchins was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
Jenner officially broke her silence about Hutchins’s death Thursday, during a broadcast of Fox News at Night.
“Recently, my good friend Sophia passed away in a tragic accident,” the former Olympian said. “But for the last seven weeks, I've been dealing with death, and it’s so difficult.”
She then spoke about the recent shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, which killed two students and wounded 18 others.
“So when this happened, it really hit me hard,” Jenner added. “Because here I am dealing with my grief, and I just can't even imagine parents who dropped their kid off at school and, like that father just said, ‘I'll never get a chance to talk to him again.’ That is just so horrible.
“And I've been dealing with grief, and these people have a long road ahead of them, and they're going to be dealing with grief,” she continued.
Hutchins died from blunt force injuries, according to a death certificate from the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health shared in July. Her death was also ruled an accident.
Hutchins ran into another vehicle on the road before veering off a cliff. The occupants of the other vehicle were not injured.
“It doesn’t seem like she was following them,” Sgt. Eduardo Saucedo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told the Daily Mail in July. “I think she just came up on them and then hit the car. So it looked like she tried to maneuver to go around it, but she was going too fast and just ended up clipping the rear end of that Mazda, causing her to veer off and go off the cliff there.”
Hutchins, who was the CEO of a now-defunct beauty brand, formed a close bond with Jenner in 2015, after the former decathlete came out as a transgender woman. They were introduced to each other by their hairdresser.
She regularly appeared in the documentary tracking Jenner’s life post-transition, I Am Cait, as well as Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
In 2017, Hutchins, who was also transgender, replaced Jenner’s ex-wife Kris Jenner as Caitlin’s manager following their divorce, moving into her Malibu home. She also became CEO and director of the Caitlyn Jenner Foundation, a non-profit organization that “promotes equality and combats discrimination” against transgender people.
After posting regular photos from the mansion, it was incorrectly reported that the pair were romantically linked — but Hutchins told The New York Times in 2018 that this was never the case.
She spoke about their friendship in more detail on The Hidden Truth podcast, stating, “I wouldn’t describe it as romantic. I would describe it as: we’re partners, business partners.
“We have so much in common and see the world so similarly, and are both such a good match for each other because we challenge each other. We’re partners in everything we do – we’re inseparable, we’re business partners, we live together, we share a dog, we share family, we share a life together.”
