'Young and the Restless' stars mourn Kristoff St. John's death

Kristoff St. John’s death has left his fiancée asking, “How did it happen???”

The well-known daytime soap opera star died Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 52, TMZ reported Monday. St. John is best known for playing Neil Winters on the long-running CBS show, The Young and the Restless. His cause of death has not yet been revealed.TMZ reported the actor had been dealing with depression and had recently checked himself into a medical centre.

St. John’s 24-year-old son, Julian, died of an apparent suicide in 2014. Two weeks ago, the actor responded to a Twitter post about the grief that comes with losing a child. The pain associated with that kind of loss was something he was familiar with, and he thanked the poster for sharing.

Since his passing, there has been an outpouring of grief online from those who worked with him. The daytime TV veteran starred on the CBS show for nearly three decades, making his debut in 1991.

Young and the Restless co-star Eric Braeden called St. John “a hell of an actor and simply one of the nicest guys ever!” Another CBS co-star, Melody Thomas Scott, said she was left “brokenhearted” by the news. Actress Sharon Case posted a photo of the two together with the words, “RIP, my friend.”

The news appears to have hit actor Shemar Moore especially hard. He posted a series of posts on Instagram and Twitter praising St. John, calling him his “brother” and vowing to carry the torch for the “most popular, Iconic, African American Soap Star EVER!!!!!”

Moore added, “I’ll finish what YOU started!!!”

There was also a heartfelt response to the death from St. John’s fiancée, Russian model Kseniya Mikhaleva. In a now-deleted Instagram post, the model acknowledged that she “can’t believe” the news.

“You were everything to me,” Mikhaleva said, praising the actor as a “loving man.”

The show that made him famous must now decide on how to move forward, if at all, with his popular TV character.

St. John won two Daytime Emmy Awards for his role on The Young and the Restless and was nominated nine other times, according to IMDB.