RJ Mitte's Mom Says She Discovered His Dead Body: 'A Mother Should Never Have to Find Their Child This Way'

Breaking Bad star RJ Mitte’s mom, Dyna Mitte, is talking for the first time about the day she went to her son’s home in Brownsville, Texas, and found him.

RJ died on Monday, October 12, at 34. She has spoken out now because she wants to help save other families from what she went through.

“A mother should never have to find their child this way,” Dyna said during an interview published on Thursday, October 15.

When RJ didn’t answer Dyna’s phone call on Monday, Dyna really didn’t give it too much thought. RJ was a night owl and usually slept until around noon, so Dyna figured she would just drop off a meal for her son rather than wait for him to call back. “I called him at 11,” she explained. “He didn’t answer, so I picked up lunch and went to take it to him, and that’s when I discovered him.”

Dyna described the last few days before his death as particularly challenging.

Before his death, RJ spent time with family and communicated with several friends. “I know the weekend was a tough weekend,” she explained. “He had some hurdles that weekend.”

Dyna stated that she encouraged RJ to seek out a therapist for approximately three months prior to his death. According to Dyna, each time she encouraged him to see a therapist, he replied that he was comfortable dealing with issues on his own. “I’ve been offering for him to go to therapy, trying to get him to go there,” Dyna remembered. “But he was like, ‘No, I’ve got it. It’s OK. I’m handling it.’”

Upon reflection, Dyna said she wishes she had been more insistent about RJ going to therapy, and she believes RJ’s death was a “spur of the moment” decision. “I would have given my life for his life,” she expressed.

RJ’s representative confirmed that RJ died by suicide, while the Brownsville Police Department has said it’s continuing to investigate the manner of his death, according to a report. Dyna explained that her son was a “special, special soul,” and she hopes people will reflect on RJ’s work, his generosity, and the lives he positively impacted.

She said she’ll continue to talk about his death in the hope that her family’s loss will help someone else. “If I can say one person is helped, I think that’s what RJ would expect,” she said.

RJ, who was adopted as a baby by Dyna and began working as a teenager to help financially support his family, is well known for playing Walter “Flynn” White Jr., the teenage son of Bryan Cranston’s Walter White and Anna Gunn’s Skyler White, on AMC’s Breaking Bad from 2008 to 2013. Like his television character, RJ had cerebral palsy, and he advocated for including people with disabilities in the film industry. RJ also appeared in the ABC Family series Switched at Birth. Bryan and Anna were among the former costars who paid tribute to RJ after his death, and Bryan said he had made plans with RJ only a few weeks before he died.