MTV “Buckwild” Star Shain Gandee Found Dead
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MTV(NEW YORK) — Shain Gandee, one of the stars of the MTV reality show Buckwild, was found dead Monday after he left a bar to go four-wheeling in a rural part of West Virginia.
Gandee, 21, of Sissonville, W. Va., was last seen early Sunday morning at Larry’s Bar with his uncle David Gandee. According to the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office, the two left the bar around 3 a.m. to go four-wheeling in Shain Gandee’s Ford Bronco.
Family members spent Sunday searching for the missing men and alerted authorities late in the day.
Their bodies, along with another unidentified person, were located Monday morning, roughly 30 hours after they left the bar. The sheriff’s department used ATVs to access the remote area where the three bodies were found, but the cause of death is unknown.
Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper, a former West Virginia police chief, confirmed the news of Shain Gandee’s death and said this tragedy will affect many lives in the small community.
A spokesperson for MTV released the following statement to ABC News:
We are shocked and saddened by the terrible news about Shain Gandee, and those involved in this tragic incident. We are waiting for more information, but at this time our main concern is for the Gandee family and their friends. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Shain had a magnetic personality, with a passion for life that touched everyone he met and we will miss him dearly.
On the show’s website, Shain Gandee was described as “the sociable and loyal High School Prom King who loves four-wheeling, but loves his parents most of all.”
The show first premiered on MTV in January and was criticized for depicting negative stereotypes of West Virginians. Sen. Joe Manchin wrote a letter to the president of MTV before the show aired criticizing it for encouraging youth to misbehave for the camera.
“You preyed on young people, coaxed them into displaying shameful behavior – and now you are profiting from it. That is just wrong,” said Manchin.
Some television critics even called the show the “Redneck Jersey Shore,” which debuted in the same time slot Jersey Shore once held on MTV.
The cable network announced in February that the show would return for a second season.
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