Former ALF Child Star Benji Gregory Found Dead In His Car With Service Dog

Benji Gregory, best known for starring as a child on the hit sitcom ALF, has died.

His death occurred last month and attracted little notice until his sister Rebecca Hertzberg-Pfaffinger revealed the tragedy to the media this week. According to her, Benji was found dead in his car in the parking lot of a Chase Bank in Peoria, Arizona back on June 13.

Per TMZ on Thursday morning, Rebecca believes that Benji went to the bank at some point on the previous day to deposit residual checks from his entertainment work. His family thinks that he then fell asleep in his car — and tragically died hours later due to vehicular heat stroke in the blazing summer sunt of Arizona. Sadly, his service dog — a pug named Hans (pictured above, inset) — was also in the car with him, and the dog also perished. Benji was just 46 years old.

Per that news outlet, Rebecca revealed that her brother had suffered from bipolar disorder, depression, and a sleep disorder that would sometimes keep him awake for days at a time. That sleeping issue, and the exhaustion of falling asleep in his car leading to possible death from the heat, may have played a role in the tragedy. Officially, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office says that his cause of death is still pending. Per People, the temperature in Peoria rose as high as 109 degrees on June 12.

Benji’s most high-profile gig was on the aforementioned sitcom ALF. He played the role of Brian Tanner on 101 episodes of the show between 1986 and 1990. He later left the entertainment industry, and in 2003, he enlisted in the US Navy. He graduated from a Navy training school to become an aerographer’s mate while in the service, and later received an honorable medical discharge from that organization.

Gregory could have been soon to return to ALF fame in some form, as the show was in the development stages as a possible reboot in 2018. That eventually fell through, but in February of this year, Shout! Factory announced that it had acquired the rights to ALF and was trying to develop new content to build off the show’s original run.

We are sending our most sincere condolences to Gregory’s family, friends, and loved ones.

R.I.P.

[Image via Benji Gregory/Instagram/Instagram]