The 53-year-old was taken to hospital in critical condition after driving her car into a home in Los Angeles. She had been declared “legally dead under California law,” but her family had asked that her heart continue to beat until an organ donor match was found, respecting her wishes. On Sunday, a spokesman confirmed that recipients had been identified and surgeons were ready to remove and transplant “multiple organs”. Heche’s Mini Cooper is said to have sped away, plowed into a house in the city’s Mar Vista area and burst into flames on August 5. Image: Heche at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Photo: Associated Press In a statement, her family said they had “lost a shining light, a kinder and happier soul, a loving mother and a loyal friend.” Earlier Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said it had completed its investigation. “As of today, there will be no further investigations into this case,” police said in a statement. “Any information or records that have been requested prior to this turn of events will continue to be collected as they arrive as a matter of formalities and included in the overall case. When a person suspected of a crime is terminated, we are not presented for examination.” The department previously confirmed to the PA news agency that the crash was being investigated as a felony DUI after preliminary blood tests revealed the presence of drugs in Heche’s system. However, additional testing was required to rule out hospital-administered substances. Heche, who starred in Donnie Brasco, Wag The Dog and I Know What You Did Last Summer, is survived by her two sons Atlas and Homer; Winner of a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for her roles as twin sisters on the NBC soap opera Another World, Heche starred in the 1998 adventure comedy Six Days Seven Nights with Harrison Ford and co-starred with Demi Moore and Cher in the TV movie HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk. He became one half of Hollywood’s most famous same-sex couple at the time when he dated comedian and actress Ellen DeGeneres. Image: Anne Heche, left, and Ellen DeGeneres in 1999 Against her studio’s wishes, Heche went public at the 1997 red carpet premiere for the disaster film Volcano, taking DeGeneres with her. The couple were together for more than three years before Heche ended the relationship. In 2001 she married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman. After the couple divorced, Heche began a long-term relationship with actor James Tupper, which ended in 2018. Anne Celeste Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio on May 25, 1969 and was the youngest of five children. At 13, she was devastated by her father’s death from AIDS and the revelation that he had been secretly having a homosexual relationship. Her brother Nathan died three months after their father in a car accident.
