The official record is still incomplete. What is no longer incomplete is the sequence police and paramedics described after Presley Gerber was found unresponsive at a Santa Monica rehabilitation facility on Sunday morning.
He was 27. He was the son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, and the older brother of model and actress Kaia Gerber. By Monday, Santa Monica police had put a name on the investigation that had already begun to circulate: suspected overdose. There was, they said, no indication of foul play. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner still has not issued an official cause or manner of death.
What police say happened on Sunday morning
The first public timeline comes from dispatch traffic and from the Santa Monica Police Department itself.
At about 9:35 a.m. on September 20, 2026, officers were sent to the 1000 block of Berkeley Street in Santa Monica after a report of a possible overdose. Separate dispatch recordings obtained by People and Page Six also referenced cardiac arrest at the same address. Police, firefighters, and an ambulance all responded. A source later told Page Six that crews were on scene for roughly three hours.
When officers arrived, they found an adult male who was already deceased. Paramedics pronounced death at 9:45 a.m. — ten minutes after the first call went out. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner later identified the man as Presley Gerber. The department said detectives are investigating the death as a suspected overdose.
That is the core of the “new details” that moved the story from a family confirmation to a law-enforcement file. It is also the limit of what officials will lock in. A suspected overdose in a police statement is not the same thing as a completed toxicology report. The medical examiner has been explicit about that distinction.
The family asked for one thing
A representative speaking for Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber, and Kaia Gerber released a single sentence: the family is asking for privacy during this very difficult and painful time. No further public comment from the parents or from Kaia had been added to that line by the time police and the medical examiner put their own statements out.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Rande-Gerber-Kaia-Gerber-Cindy-Crawford-Presley-Gerber-The-Fashion-Awards-092126-71bd73be23ef43a892270cc99f0aa26e.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Gerber-Family-fa1aae4cef2545d18e63b182a84e9167.jpg)
The photographs that now circulate beside those statements are from another life: red carpets, family launches, a son standing next to his parents and sister. They are the images a famous family cannot take back once the news is out. They are also the reason so many people felt they already knew him before they knew how he died.
He died where he had gone for help
Medical examiner records place the death at a rehabilitation facility in the Los Angeles area. Multiple outlets identified the program as Resolutions Living in Santa Monica. Page Six, citing a source, reported that Gerber had checked himself in over the weekend because “he knew he needed help,” and that at the time of his death he was living with several other people in a sober house on the grounds.
That detail is what makes the police language land with particular force. He was not found in a nightclub or on a roadside. He was inside a place built, at least in theory, to interrupt the pattern that had followed him for years. Whether the suspected overdose happened because substances reached him there, because of something he brought in, or because of a medical event that dispatch coded as overdose and cardiac arrest is exactly what investigators and the medical examiner now have to sort out. Police have said they do not suspect foul play and have not described any suspects.
The autopsy is done. The answers are not
On Monday, a deputy medical examiner performed an examination. The office then released the statement that will govern the next few months of this story.
The County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner said it was in the early stages of investigating the death of 27-year-old model Presley Gerber and that limited information was available. The cause and manner of death were deferred, meaning additional testing or studies were requested before a determination can be made. Because the death investigation is ongoing, the office said it cannot disclose which tests were ordered. Deferred cases, it added, can take a few months.
That language is bureaucratic on purpose. It is also a warning against treating Monday’s police phrasing as a finished medical conclusion. “Suspected overdose” is how detectives are working the case. “Deferred” is how the medical examiner is working the body. Both can be true at once.
The career that put him in public, and the struggle he put there himself
Presley Walker Gerber was born in 1999 in California. He signed with IMG at 15, made a runway debut for Moschino as a teenager, and by 17 had appeared in campaigns that included Calvin Klein and walked for houses such as Dolce & Gabbana. He was always going to be photographed. He was Cindy Crawford’s son. He also built a modeling identity of his own — sharp features, tattoos, a public restlessness that later became part of how he talked about getting well.
The other public record is the one he chose to leave. After a 2019 DUI arrest at 19, he became unusually direct about depression, panic, medication, and addiction. On the Studio 22 podcast in 2023 he said mental health was “a 24/7 job” and “such a big part of my life.” He added that if he could help one person or a hundred people “get out of that place that I was in at one point in my life, that’s all I need to do.” He hoped, he said, that he had “made the mistakes for some other people, so they don’t have to make the same mistakes that I made.”
In late 2025 he described seeing as many as 15 psychiatrists and cycling through medications. In March 2026, in one of his last Instagram posts, he shared that he had undergone psychedelic treatment — an ibogaine “flood dose” in Mexico — as another attempt to break the cycle. Those posts were not leaks. They were his own attempt to turn a private war into something usable for other people. That is why the location of his death is so hard for many readers to hold: he had been saying, in public, that he was still trying.
What is known, and what is being filled in by rumor
Here is the confirmed list, stripped of speculation.
He died on Sunday, September 20, 2026, at age 27. Death was pronounced at 9:45 a.m. by paramedics. The call that brought police came in around 9:35 a.m. to a Santa Monica address associated with a rehab program. Detectives are investigating a suspected overdose. Officials say there is no indication of foul play. An examination was completed Monday. Cause and manner of death are deferred pending further testing that could take months. The family has asked for privacy.
Here is what is not confirmed: the specific substance or substances, if any, that will appear on the final toxicology; whether cardiac arrest was the mechanism, a dispatch label, or both; and whether anything about the facility’s security or staffing will become part of the investigative file. Those answers, if they come, will come from the medical examiner and from police — not from comment threads.
The speed of the coverage is itself part of the story. A famous last name, a rehab address, and two words on a scanner — “cardiac arrest,” “overdose” — are enough to generate a full news cycle before the lab work even starts. That is how a deferred death becomes a headline about “harrowing details” while the only official details are a time of death, a location, and a working theory.
The photograph that now has to stand in for a conclusion
In May 2026, the Gerbers appeared together at a RE/DONE event in Los Angeles. In other frames from recent years, Presley stands between his parents on a pink step-and-repeat, or beside Kaia at a family launch on a lawn. Those pictures were never meant to be last pictures. They are what remains while the county finishes its tests.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Rande-Gerber-Cindy-Crawford-Presley-Gerber-World-Premiere-Palm-Royale-092126-8bf4460ce0ef4e0bbc180bdfe9917f7d.jpg)
Presley Gerber spent the second half of his short public life trying to describe a condition that does not respect last names, runways, or even the locked doors of a treatment house. Police now say the last morning of that life looks, from the outside, like an overdose and a cardiac emergency. The medical examiner says it is too soon to write that down as fact.
Until the deferred finding is replaced with a cause, the most accurate version of the story is also the least satisfying one: a 27-year-old man who had asked for help was found dead where he had gone to get it. His family has asked to be left alone with that. The investigation, at least, is not finished.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, the SAMHSA National Helpline in the United States is 1-800-662-4357, available 24 hours a day.