U.S. Rep. Sean Casten's 17-year-old daughter has died

[BunnyMcGee]

Source: John Byrne, John Keilman, Chicago Tribune

Suburban U.S. Rep Sean Casten’s 17-year-old daughter died Monday morning at the family’s Downers Grove home, the congressman’s office and Downers Grove police said this evening.

“This morning, congressman Casten’s beloved daughter, Gwen, passed away,” the Casten campaign said in a statement. “The Casten family requests privacy, and we will be issuing no further comment during this heartbreaking time.”

Downers Grove police were called to a house in the block where Casten lives just before 7 a.m. Monday “for an unresponsive seventeen year old female,” according to a Police Department statement. “First responders determined that the subject was deceased.”

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/u-s-rep-sean-casten-s-17-year-old-daughter-found-dead/ar-AAYqz0q?ocid=hplocalnews

[Skittles]

1. horrible

[BunnyMcGee]

2. My Congressional Representative

Regularly reaches out to let constituents know what goes on, and to listen.

[ShazzieB]

14. Mine, too, Bunny.

An all around great guy. This is awful.

[jimfields33]

3. That's horrible. Family will never be the same.

[NNadir]

4. I can only imagine the congressman's grief. That's horrible. n/t.

[essaynnc]

5. I'm so sorry.....

I cannot imagine my young children dying, whether by bullet, or accidents, or other causes. my heart goes out to them....

[LoisB]

6. That is so sad. So young.

[3catwoman3]

7. This is a shock. Nothing sadder than the death of a child.

He has been our rep. With redistricting, he will no longer be.

He is in a primary with Marie Newman, who decided not to run in her previous district because she thought the demographics were more favorable to her primary opponent, Chuy Garcia

I wonder if he will stay in the race?

[Gore1FL]

8. I cannot imagine the grief. nt

[orleans]

10. read the article linked in the op -- she sounds like she was just a great person

she was involved in the march for our lives and organized "a shooting-related first-aid course for her high school classmates."

in another article:

Shortly before Casten's congressional office announced his daughter's death, Casten's campaign asked all Illinois TV stations to immediately pull his campaign spots off the air until further notice.

A Democrat from Downers Grove, the 50-year-old Casten is running for his third term in Congress in the newly drawn 6th District, which he has represented since defeating Republican incumbent Congressman Peter Roskam in 2018.

Casten is running against fellow incumbent freshman U.S. Rep. Marie Newman and Nicor operation mechanic Charles Hughes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/u-s-rep-sean-castens-17-year-old-daughter-gwen-dies/

my daughter & i were talking about this tonight. i said i thought he had his daughters in his campaign ad. she said yes, it opened with him saying something to the effect of: the best day of his life was when his daughter was born & the second best day was when his second daughter was born.

that would explain why he pulled the ads. just too absolutely heart wrenching

[Martin68]

11. We will understand better when the autopsy report is filed.

When a family declines to reveal the cause of death in a case like this, odds are there is something they want to hide. I sympathize, but I think transparency is best for all concerned in the long run.

[3catwoman3]

12. She was found dead at home early in the morning.

They may not even know the cause yet. Seems a little early to presume they are hiding anything.

It could be something they do not wish to publicize, or it could be something like a ruptured aneurysm.

[Biglinda 52]

24. Jumping to conclusions

It does take a while for an autopsy and especially if they are doing toxicology studies. Why are you jumping to crazy conclusions?

[Martin68]

25. You're right, there are other good explanations for not making public comment.

Mea culpa.

[onenote]

26. If people didn't jump to conclusions, there would be a lot less traffic on the Internet.

[Martin68]

29. OK, lump me together with every bad actor on the internet. And how many of them have acknowledged

that they made a mistake and apologized? Get off you high horse, m'lord.

[onenote]

30. My comment was a general, and true statement.

I didn't intend for you to take it personally.

[Bluethroughu]

13. Devastatingly sad.

I'm a parent, and I can imagine the heartbreak.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. She was 17. I'm going to guess it's suicide.

Which is heartbreaking, I know.

My son took his life in 2017 at the age of 30. At least he was here that long.

I will add this. He left behind a note, oddly enough written two months earlier. Anyway, in the middle of it he made me laugh out loud. It helped a lot.

I will add this. As painful as it is that he chose to take his own life, I think that losing a child to some kind of car or other accident, an illness, or something like the senseless mass shootings that are all too common would be worse. He made a decision, and even though I wish he hadn't made it, at least he wasn't brutally taken from us by things completely beyond his control.

[AllyCat]

17. I'm sorry you lost your son.

I cannot imagine. Hugs to you.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. Thank you.

It was five years on the 9th of this month.

I'll add this. He lived in Portland, OR, played Ultimate Frisbee there and had tons of friends. The memorial we had for him in a park was absolutely amazing. We did a "raffle" of his t-shirts and some other stuff, and people joyously took home remembrances of him. He'd been cremated, and someone put his ashes into a whole lot of small containers, and encouraged people to take them and spread them where they thought it would be appropriate. For at least two years there were postings on his FB page showing his ashes scattered literally all over the world. That was amazing and wonderful.

As sorry as I am to have lost him, I have a very strong belief in an afterlife and expect to see him again eventually.

[BigmanPigman]

22. Your perspective is refreshing.

I'm glad that he made you laugh. And the idea of raffling off his stuff and taking ashes is really cool. I'm going to add that to my instructions for my own death.

Even though I'm an atheist I know that something happens after you die and that we don't understand any of it at this time. I have had my own experiences after my dad died and after each of my dogs died and they were very real. I've listened to people from all over the world describe their near death experiences and tons of them are greeted by friends, family and pets that had already died. I'm looking forward to it myself. Also, people who killed themselves are with all of your other family and friends who died of other causes (the BS from certain religions saying they will burn in Hell is all BS).

[3catwoman3]

28. Like Representative Jamie Raskin, you must be a very strong person.

That there could be something in what I will choose to call a farewell note to make you laugh is astonishing to me. I'm glad you found it helpful.

Also, your perspective about him choosing to leave being better, so to speak, is making me think. I have no experience with losing someone to suicide, for which I am grateful. When I was 26, my brother and only sibling died in a scuba diving adventure gone wrong, He was a much too young 23. The only remotely comforting aspect of his sudden and unexpected death was not having had to watch him waste away from a terminal illness. My parents never interred his ashes - not sure why. My dad died at 90, in 2011, and my mother never buried his - also not sure why. My mom died at 98 in 2020. About this time last year, I made arrangements bury all 3 at the same time, in plots my parents had purchased way back in the 1980s. I did not consider scattering anyone's ashes because I couldn't bear the idea of touching them. I delivered the 3 boxes to the cemetery and left. I did not want to watch the actual interment.

It sounds as if your son's friends celebrated him in a most joyous way.

I admire your strength and outlook.

[shrike3]

27. God, I'm sorry.

A casual friend of mine, part of the group I run around with, lost her only daughter, a teen-ager, to suicide years ago.

She lives such a joyful, good life. One forgets at times what she has been through. She says she lives the kind of life her daughter would want her to live.

I'm sure you don't think of yourself as brave, but you are. All the best.

[AllyCat]

16. Oh no. I am so sorry for their tragic loss.

Cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. My deepest condolences to their family.

[burrowowl]

19. It's unbearably sad for parents to loose a child.

[mahina]

20. Her poor family. Peace to them and to her.

An aside- how sad that my first thought was “one of ours?”

They are all ours. Auwe. 💧

[murielm99]

21. My son's rep.

[Samrob]

23. Condolences to the family.

Rep Casten was gerrymandered out of a sure seat. He now has to run against two good Dems. How devastating that he would lose his beloved daughter. My heart hurts for the family.

[artemisia1]

31. Sad. /nt

[artemisia1]

32. Natural causes

https://www.tmz.com/2022/06/15/rep-sean-casten-17-year-old-daughter-died-sleep/