‘The Wire’ star James Ransone has died at the age of 46
Actor James Ransone, best known for his role as troubled longshoreman Ziggy Sobotka on HBO’s The wirehas died at the age of 46, RadarOnline.com reports.
Ranson died by suicide on Friday, Dec. 19, in Los Angeles, according to data from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. His cause of death was listed as “hanging”, and his place of death was noted as a “barn”. The medical examiner’s office declared his body ready for release.
Ransone was a married father of two children. After his death, his wife, Jamie McPhee, shared on her social media profile a fundraiser benefitting the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
Ransone appeared in 12 episodes of The wire during the second season in 2003, playing Ziggy Sobotka, the son of labor leader Frank Sobotka, played by Chris Bauer.
Beyond The Wire, Ransone became a regular on television dramas and appeared on HBO’s Generational murder And Tremeas well as Amazon’s Bosch. His last television appearance came earlier this year in a season 2 episode of Poker facewhich aired in June.
In the film, Ransone built up a long resume of roles Prom night (2008), Sinister (2012), Sinister 2 (2015), Mandarine (2015), Mr. Right (2015), It chapter two (2019), The black phone (2021) and Black phone 2 (2025).
In 2021, Ransone publicly shared that he had survived sexual abuse. He accused his former teacher, Timothy Rualo, of sexually assaulting him multiple times over a six-month period in 1992 at his family home in Phoenix, Maryland. Ransone detailed the allegations in a lengthy Instagram message sent directly to his alleged abuser.
“We did very little math,” Ransone recalls. “The strongest memory I have of the abuse was washing blood and damn things out of my sheets after you left. I remember doing this as a 12-year-old because I felt too ashamed to tell anyone.”
Ransone said the alleged abuse led to a “lifetime of shame and embarrassment” and contributed to years of alcoholism and heroin addiction. After getting sober in 2006, he said he was “ready to face his past.” He reported the allegations to Baltimore County police in March 2020, but prosecutors ultimately declined to file charges.
In a 2016 Interview magazine profile, Ransone reflected on his sobriety and said he quit heroin at age 27 after five years of addiction.
“People think I got sober from working on ‘Generation Kill’. That’s not true. I got sober six or seven months before that,” he said at the time.
