Authorities said that John Travolta’s teenage son, Jett, passed away on Friday in the Bahamas after apparently suffering a seizure and hit his head against the bathtub at his family’s vacation home.
The family will return to Florida on Tuesday with Jett's body after the autopsy planned for Monday will have been performed in order to determine the exact cause of death, hospital officials and family friends told the Daily News. They will travel aboard the actor's private plane - but Travolta is not expected to serve as pilot because of the grief.
Preston and Travolta have said that when he was 2 years old, Jett was diagnosed with Kawasaki Syndrome. Dr. Thomas Lehman, an expert on the malady at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New Yorkan, said the illness leads to inflamed blood vessels in young children and may also cause a heart attack. It is questionable, though, whether Jett received the proper medical care, since the family’s belief in Scientology has possible restrictions on medications, but a source close to the Travolta family denied that. Furthermore, mother Kelly Preston said he also had asthma and blamed household cleaners and fertilizers, and said that a detoxification program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology helped improve his health, according to People magazine.
John Travolta’s brother, Joey, came to the conclusion that Jett might have suffered from autism. Ironically, Joey learned a lot about this disorder when he interviewed 65 autistic teenagers for a documentary called “Normal People Scare Me,” and recognized his nephew’s symptoms in each and every one of them. Critics said that Travolta, a devout Scientologist, refused to admit that his son suffered from autism because it would have required Jett to see a psychiatrist, which Scientology forbids.
Police say Jett was last seen alive around 11:30 p.m. on the 1st of January, when he went to the bathroom. Having many disabilities, Jett slept with a baby monitor in his room, but that night both his nannies were asleep and did not hear anything.
Michael McDermott, John Travolta's lawyer and close friend, said that when Jeff (Nanny No. 1) and John administered CPR to Jett, he may still have been breathing, although that is unconfirmed.
The medicine Jeff was on, Depokate, originally reduced his seizures to about once every three weeks but after a few years it started to lose its effectiveness and began to damage the boy’s liver. So his parents, after consulting doctors, stopped giving it to him.
Jett was the oldest child of Travolta, 54, and Preston, 46, who were married in 1991. They also have an 8-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu. In a statement posted Sunday on his website, the actor thanked everyone for their support: "Jett was the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for and lit up the lives of everyone he encountered. We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief."
