The Walking Dead actress Kelley Mack has died at the age of 33.
Mack (real name: Kelley Lynne Klebenow) passed away on August 2 following a battle with cancer, her family announced on Instagram on Tuesday.
Mack had been stricken with glioma of the central nervous system, according to a statement her family shared on CaringBridge.
The rising star’s most prominent role during her lifetime was as Addy on The Walking Dead’s ninth season, which aired from 2018 to 2019.
Mack’s family noted that she would be honored at a celebration of life ceremony in Glendale, Ohio, on August 16.
‘It is with indelible sadness that we are announcing the passing of our dear Kelley,’ her family wrote in a post shared to her Instagram account. ‘Such a bright, fervent light has transitioned to the beyond, where we all eventually must go.
‘Kelley passed peacefully on Saturday evening with her loving mother Kristen and steadfast aunt Karen present,’ they continued. ‘Kelley has already come to many of her loved ones in the form of various butterflies 🦋 ❤️. She will be missed by so many to depths that words cannot express.’
The statement concluded with a reminder that Mack ‘would want you all to know how much she loves you.’
‘And as her sister, I want you all to know how brave that tough SOB was, especially when she decided to make the leap to be reunited with God. I’m so f***ing proud of her.’
In January, Mack revealed on Instagram that she had first noticed symptoms of what was later diagnosed as a rare form of cancer in September 2024.
Alongside a photo of her beaming and flashing a thumbs up from a hospital bed, the actress wrote that she had suffered from ‘persistent lower back pain,’ which she assumed was from a ‘slipped disc.’
But after a few weeks the back pain was accompanied by itching caused by nerve pain in the front of her right thigh, and soon Mack said she was suffering from debilitating shooting pains in her legs and back that forced her to ‘sleep in a recliner for a month because laying down was too painful.’
She wrote that an emergency MRI conducted the day before Thanksgiving revealed an ‘abnormal mass’ on her spinal cord.
Mack said she was ultimately diagnosed with diffuse midline glioma, a rare form of cancer that begins as tumors in the brain or spine, according to the National Cancer Institute.
