Police said they found the vehicle that killed former child star Kianna Underwood in a hit-and-run last week (January 16).
The New York Daily News reported that the New York Police Department found the car, a black 2021 Ford Explorer, and is investigating whether the owner was involved in the fatal strike. They have also contacted the owner, who reportedly refused to speak with them without a lawyer present.
Last Friday, Underwood was crossing the street when she was struck by a vehicle at 6:50 a.m. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. While Underwood was still trapped underneath the car, initially described as a black Ford SUV, the driver continued for another block. She was 33 years old when she died from her injuries.
Underwood had impressive acting credits at a young age, from television to film to musicals. Her first television role was in the cartoon “Little Bill,” and she starred in the movie “The 24 Hour Woman” in 1999 opposite Rosie Perez before taking on her most recent TV spot in the final season of the Nickelodeon show “All That” in 2005 alongside Kenan Thompson and Amanda Bynes. She also played the role of Little Inez in the first national tour of “Hairspray.”
One of Underwood’s fellow “All That” alums, Angelique Bates, has spoken out, saying that Nickelodeon should have done more to help her. Bates said to TMZ that she had tried to bring attention to the fact that Underwood was homeless in 2023.
Bates and Underwood did not act on the same season of “All That,” as Bates was on the show in 1994 and 1995, but she said she remembered Underwood from the show’s wrap party.
“Pretty much everyone had turned their back on me. So the interaction with her always stuck out to me, Bates said. “She gave me the biggest hug and was telling me how much she looked up to me. She wanted to be on the show because of me. And for her season, she was the only Black girl.”
According to Underwood’s old neighbors in the Lincoln housing projects in Harlem, New York, where Underwood grew up before her parents split, it was suprising to find out that Underwood had fallen on hard times in recent years. Some assumed that she had made it big in her acting career and only recently found out that her life had taken a different turn.
A woman who was a friend of Underwood told the Daily News that she talked about wanting to go back to acting, but “life is hard.” Underwood reportedly struggled with housing insecurity and substance abuse in her adulthood.
Bates said to TMZ, “I felt like we should have done better. Do not let this industry raise your child, or you’re gonna see the outcome of your child being raised by the industry, and you’re not gonna like it,” she said.
