Former Glee star Mark Salling has died in an apparent suicide just over a month after he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
The deceased, 35, was found dead in the Los Angeles River in Sunland near his Californian home today.
He was arrested on December 29, 2015, after 50,000 photos of prepubescent minors having sex were found on his laptop and hard drives in a raid on his home three days before.
Salling was due to be sentenced in March 2018 after reaching an agreement with prosecutors in October 2017.
He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to possession of child pornography and faced up to four to seven years in jail.
The terms of his October agreement with prosecutors demanded that he registered as a sex offender, enter a treatment programme, have no unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18 and stay away from schoolyards, parks, swimming pools, playgrounds and video arcades.
He was also ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution to each victim of the child pornography he had downloaded who requested it.
He reportedly tried to end his own life in August by slitting his own wrist but chickened out at the sight of blood.
“I can confirm that Mark Salling passed away early this morning,” Michael J. Proctor, his lawyer said in a statement. “ Mark was a gentle and loving person, a person of great creativity, who was doing his best to atone for some serious mistakes and errors of judgment. He is survived by his mother and father, and his brother. The Salling family appreciates the support they have been receiving and asks for their privacy to be respected.”