Sophia Hutchins, Caitlyn Jenner’s friend and manager, was reportedly speeding while driving an ATV before her deadly crash in Malibu on Wednesday, July 2.
It was reported that Hutchins was riding the ATV near her friend and client Jenner’s Malibu home when she struck a car on Wednesday morning. The collision reportedly caused the ATV and Hutchins to plunge 350 feet into a nearby ravine, where she was later pronounced dead at the scene. (Hutchins was 29 years old.)
Sergeant Eduardo Saucedo, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Malibu / Lost Hills division, has since told The Daily Mail that Hutchins was driving a black and blue-colored 2013 Polaris utility vehicle when she collided with a gray 2016 Mazda 6. (The two women in the Mazda were not hurt.)
“It looks like she may have been speeding and rear-ended the other car, the other party, and then that caused her to veer to the right and go off the cliff,” Saucedo clarified. “It doesn’t seem like she was following them. I think she just came up on them and then hit the car.”
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Saucedo suggested that Hutchins could have been trying to “maneuver” around the Mazda at the time of the crash.
“She was going too fast and just ended up clipping the rear end of that Mazda, causing her to veer off and go off the cliff there,” the officer theorized.
The officer confirmed that Jenner did visit the accident site as the investigation was underway. Investigators initially reportedly had to leave the damaged ATV in the ravine because local tow trucks did not have the necessary equipment to haul it back up the cliff.
Saucedo suggested that the investigators would wait for the coroner’s department to prepare a toxicology report before determining whether or not Hutchins was impaired while behind the wheel.
Us Weekly has reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
Hutchins lived at Jenner’s Malibu home, where she also worked out of a converted guest house. She originally appeared on Jenner’s 2015 docuseries I Am Cait before becoming the athlete’s business manager. (Hutchins graduated from Pepperdine University with a degree in economics and finance in 2019.)
Jenner and Hutchins frequently denied that they were romantically involved. During a 2019 Good Morning Britain interview with Piers Morgan, she objected to questions about whether or not she and Jenner were “an item.”
“We have a really special relationship. I don’t think we need to be an item to have a really special relationship, so to speak,” she replied. “I am here for Caitlyn 1,000 percent and Caitlyn’s here for me 1,000 percent. I think the best way to describe our relationship is that we are partners in every sense of the word. When it comes to work, absolutely there for each other 100 percent. When it comes to family and our personal relationship, absolutely there for each other 100 percent and there’s no denying it.”
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Jenner subsequently told The Times U.K. in October 2023 that she was “very single” and was “not even close” to looking for a relationship.
“I’ll never have a relationship in the future,” she explained. “I just don’t see that in my life. I am not looking for that.”
As part of her working partnership with Jenner, Hutchins negotiated the former Keeping Up with the Kardashians star’s involvement with the British reality show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2019 and also secured her frequent corporate speeches.
