Caitlyn Jenner's best friend Sophia Hutchins' cause of death aged 29 revealed
Hutchins, who was the best friend of Caitlyn Jenner, died in an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) accident on Wednesday, July 2, at the age of 29.
A certificate released by the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner, seen by TMZ, added that the manner of death was an accident.
This comes after officers claimed to the Daily Mail that Hutchins was speeding at the time of the crash.
She collided with another car on a road near the former Kardashians star's home, causing her to fall into a '350 feet ravine', US outlets reported at the time.
'It looks like she may have been speeding and rear-ended the other car, the other party, and then that caused her to veer to the right and go off the cliff,' Sergeant Eduardo Saucedo told the outlet earlier this month.
'It doesn't seem like she was following them. I think she just she came up on them and then hit the car,' the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sergeant stated.
The two women in the grey Mazda, which Hutchins reportedly tried to manoeuvre around, were uninjured. One was reportedly a real estate agent showing homes in the local area.
Sgt. Saucedo added: 'So it looked like she tried to manoeuvre 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.'
Jenner allegedly came down to the scene, which occurred at 11.30am, a quarter of a mile south of her home on Decker Edison Road.
The I Am Cait star, who recently returned from Israel, is 'numb with shock' according to an insider who spoke to RadarOnline.com.
'She is absolutely devastated and can't believe what's happened. Sophia was a big part of her life.'
Jenner spent the Fourth of July holiday weekend away from the public eye, only leaving her home for a solo coffee run.
She has not given a public statement, beyond telling the Daily Mail she is struggling through 'tough times' surrounding the loss.
This isn't the first time Jenner's life has been impacted by a fatal car crash, as she previously rear-ended another car while driving her Cadillac Escalade.
In 2015, the I'm A Celebrity star was towing a trailer when traffic ahead of her slowed rapidly, resulting in her hitting a Lexus in a four-car crash.
Kimberly Howe, 70, died at the scene but prosecutors for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office did not press charges for vehicular manslaughter.
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At the time, they stated they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenner's actions were negligent or unreasonable as she had attempted to brake prior to the impact.
Jenner and Hutchins met in 2015 through their hairstylist when the former announced her transition and they have been by each others' side ever since.
Hutchins, who was the CEO of a now-defunct beauty brand, was just starting her own transition at the time they met and was thought to have been inspired by Jenner.
She was hired as the former Olympian's business manager, but their bond was deeper than that, as she appeared in multiple episodes of her E! reality series I Am Cait and became friends with the Jenner family.
The pair were rumoured to be romantically involved by both stated this was not the case More Trending
'We have so much in common; we see the world so similarly, and we both are such a good match for each other because we challenge each other,' Hutchins once said of their relationship in an interview with The Hidden Truth with Jim Breslo.
'She challenges me in so many ways, has allowed me to grow in so many ways, and I hope I challenge her to grow, and I think because we share so many of the same passions and views, it's just a great match, a great partnership.'
The first version of this article was published on July 6.
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It's also the case, however, that many Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries sit beyond the reach of the GSMA - the Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association - an organisation that provides network blocking if a phone is reported stolen. Around 80 per cent of phones stolen in London end up abroad. Find My data suggests the most common destinations are Algeria and China as well as Hong Kong. With its simple customs system and history of open trade, the ex-British territory is an ideal midpoint in the supply chain. Merchants from across the developing world come to Hung To Road to buy second-hand phones in bulk. A used iPhone 16 Pro - the latest model - is available here for as little as £500. Buying a new one in the UK would cost you double that. The Mail met a group of traders from India, who said they came to Kwun Tong every quarter to order hundreds of devices for resale at their second-hand phone shop. They explained that the margins on resale were small, so profits relied on picking out the best-value models from the plethora of options available - and buying in volume. A trader from West Africa leaving the building with two boxes of phones hinted at another cog in the chain. 'It is impossible to sell locked phones,' he explained. 'Unless you have the passwords.' If a phone is locked, it is effectively unusable. So, criminals will go to extreme lengths to unlock one. Foreign resellers will often use local 'hackers-for-hire' for a fee of around £40 a phone, but many at home and abroad are not afraid to deploy more rudimentary methods. 'Phishing' attempts (where victims are duped into parting with passwords and other sensitive data) are common, while death threats to the original owners are often reported to police. The rewards are significant. A thief who stole a locked iPhone 15 in London, for example, could sell it to an initial handler for about £100. This could then be sold on to a smuggler for £200, who will try to flog it to a reseller abroad for around £400. But if anyone in this supply chain can find a way to unlock the device, they could double their money, as the resale value of the phone will rocket. In many cases a phone is impregnable. Yet there is an answer for this, too: chopping it up for parts. A hop, skip and a jump over the Hong Kong border lies the city of Shenzhen. Once a small fishing town, today it is known as 'the Silicon Valley of China'. At its southernmost point lies the subdistrict of Huaqiangbei, home to sprawling malls selling every bit of second-hand tech under the sun. Stolen phones end up here in vast numbers because traders can find buyers for every component of a device, from screens and circuit boards to chips and copper, once it is stripped for parts. Resourceful merchants will even buy unwanted plastic to melt down and use in bottles, while some phones go to recycling plants, where batteries and metal elements are re-used. As with the local cuisine, not a shred of the 'beast' will go to waste. Locked or unlocked, there is money to be made from stolen phones. Most of the traders to be found at Hung To Road are from Shenzhen. One Chinese merchant told the Mail that she goes to Hung To Road every week to buy thousands of phones to bring back across the border. The vast electronics malls of Huaqiangbei bear little resemblance to the sleek, futuristic architecture of the real Silicon Valley. The Feiyang Times building, the primary market for second-hand phones, is a drab, 29-storey tower block plastered with Chinese propaganda. On the fourth floor, frenzied trading takes place under a banner carrying a quote from President Xi Jinping: 'The Chinese race is one that is diligent in labour and skilled in creation. It is through labour and creation that we achieved historical glory.' There are also clear signs that the authorities are alert to what is really going on here. Another banner warns of 'strict crackdowns on smuggling and illegal activities', while stalls bear signs that declare a refusal 'to recycle used phones with ID password locks, activation locks, and those of unknown origin'. Perhaps it is just for show. Last year, the Daily Mail's Associate Features Editor, Clara Gaspar, saw that her iPhone 15 had turned up at the World Trade Plaza, a skyscraper housing a giant mall in Shenzhen, after her pocket had been picked in Kensington, central London. And only last month, another iPhone 15, this time belonging to our Executive Science Editor, Xantha Leatham, had been taken to Dongguan, a city north of Shenzhen. Remarkably, this was after it had initially been shipped to a sleek-looking second-hand phone store in Dubai - although staff here denied having any UK phones when approached by the Mail. So, if you've ever wondered why you suddenly can't walk around the West End without seeing a moped thief cruising the streets for a mobile to snatch, the answer lies thousands of miles away, in the explosion of these bewildering markets of used phone bartering. Metropolitan Police Commander James Conway says phone theft is surging in London today because foreign demand has made it profitable again. Scotland Yard has made it clear that, while it is ramping up enforcement, it cannot arrest its way out of the problem. Police chiefs and ministers are calling on cloud providers - Apple and Google - to build a 'kill switch' into smartphones that would stop them connecting to cloud services if reported stolen. This would perform the same function as the GSMA in parts of the world without coverage, destroying the resale market. But there is growing frustration that, after 18 months of discussions, the tech giants are still mulling the proposals over - and are yet to act. Meanwhile, it is the rest of us who suffer. Xantha's story The Mail's Executive Science Editor Xantha Leatham writes: Anyone who has ever had a phone stolen will be familiar with the gut-wrenching moment you realise it's gone. One minute you've got your friends, family, photos and emails at your fingertips and the next you feel completely cut-off from the world. It happened to me recently, at a festival in Brighton when my iPhone 15 was taken out of my handbag from right under my nose. The thieves timed it perfectly – it was busy, the main artist was playing and I had my arm around my fiancé, meaning my cross-body handbag had been repositioned out of my sight. I had no idea anything was amiss until I went to get my phone out to take a picture. Kindhearted festivalgoers started to look on the floor in case it had fallen out of my bag, but I knew it was a lost cause. Despite being immediately switched off by its captors, my phone's 'Find My' location kept pinging, allowing me to track it for weeks. It meant I could watch my devices' epic 8,000-mile journey across the world. Within two days of being taken, my phone had made its way from Brighton to a Costco car park in Watford, north London. I assumed it would change hands, that the system would be wiped and my monitoring brought to an end. But nine days later, to my surprise, I spotted it was in Dubai. Surely, I thought, this would be the end of its travels. But no – a month later I saw it had reached the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Having grown up in Hong Kong, I knew there was no getting it back now. The electronics mecca is Ground Zero for the black market in iPhones. It's now been more than six weeks since the last location update, and it's likely reached the end of the road – either being completely wiped or broken down for parts. What was most concerning about the whole ordeal was the extreme lengths the criminals went to in their attempts to gain access to my phone and its data. Some of my contacts even received a text claiming that my phone had been 'found' and asking them to provide the passcode to reveal the location. Luckily, I was savvy to the scam – but it was very convincing. While I can't help but feel annoyed at myself for allowing my device to be taken, I'm thankful for two things - phone theft insurance and an up-to-date iCloud backup.
