Former YouTube CEO’s Son Likely Died of Drug Overdose on Berkeley Campus, Grandmother Says

Marco Troper was a 19-year-old student at the University of California-Berkeley and the son of the former CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki.

According to SFGate, Troper was found dead on campus on Tuesday, February 13. Although a cause of death has not formally been released, his grandmother told SFGate she believes Troper died of a drug overdose.

Troper was the son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, according to NBC News. His father was her husband, Dennis Troper, a Google Executive, according to Palo Alto Daily Post. According to the Daily Post, Troper’s aunt was once married to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, and is the founder of 23andMe.

The family believes Troper died “from an accidental drug overdose,” the Daily Post reported, although toxicology reports are pending.

Here’s what you need to know:

Marco Troper’s Grandmother Believes the Cause of Death Is a Drug Overdose, Reports Say

Troper’s grandmother, Esther Wojcicki, told SFGate that she thinks he died of a drug overdose.

“He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what was in it,” she said. “… One thing we do know, it was a drug,” she told SFGate.

“We want to prevent this from happening to any other family,” Wojcicki said to the newspaper.

He was found “was found unresponsive in his room at Clark Kerr,” SFGate reported.

According to KRon4, there are “no signs of foul play,” according to police. Troper was “was an undeclared major in the College of Letters & Science,” and life-saving measures were attempted, the site reported.

According to the Daily Post, Troper “grew up in Los Altos and attended Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto and Menlo School in Atherton.”

“I think the most important thing is that teenagers and college students need to know that drugs today are not the same as the drugs of yesterday, they’re often laced with fentanyl. So while they think they know what they are doing if they were to look at the statistics nationwide, they can see that more people die of drug overdoses than from the pandemic,” Esther Wojcicki said to Daily Post, which reported that Troper has three other siblings.

Marco Troper’s Grandmother Remembered Him as the ‘Most Kind, Loving’ Human Being

Wojcicki also wrote a tribute to Troper on Facebook.

“Tragedy hit my family yesterday My beloved grandson Marco Troper, age 19 passed away yesterday. Our family is devastated beyond comprehension,” she wrote.

“Marco was the most kind, loving, smart, fun and beautiful human being. He was just getting starting on his second semester of his freshman year at UC Berkeley majoring in math and was truly loving it. He had a strong community of friends from his dorm at Stern Hall and his fraternity Zeta Psi and was thriving academically. At home, he would tell us endless stories of his life and friends at Berkeley,” she added.

“Marco’s life was cut too short. And we are all devastated, thinking about all the opportunities and life experiences that he will miss and we will miss together. Marco, we all love you and miss you more than you will ever know,” the grandmother wrote.

Freedom Cheteni wrote on Facebook, “With profound sadness, my most extraordinary moonshot kid, Marco Troper whose light, leadership and love will never diminish unexpectedly died. Marco and his cousins Adam and Benji were key in designing The VR School and amongst the first middle school students to envision Generative AI that is not only universally accessible, but useful in the advancement of humankind. Marco and I were working on his most inspiring idea to cure cancer leveraging nanotechnologies and Ai the last six years. My heart goes out to his mother, Susan Wojcicki and father Denis Troper and their families. I am especially heartbroken for Adam Wojcicki and Benji Wojin for this unspeakable loss. #DearMrFree #MovementThinking #Moonshots.”

Google’s Co-Founders Developed Google in the Garage of Marco Troper’s Mom Susan Wojcicki

Troper’s mom, Susan Wojcicki, was “CEO of Alphabet subsidiary YouTube from 2014 until February 2023. She now serves in an advisory role to Google and Google-parent Alphabet,” Forbes reported.

According to Forbes, in 1998, “Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page rented Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California and developed Google’s search engine there.”

She was the 16th employee at Google, according to Forbes, and “worked on everything from AdSense and Google Analytics to Google Books and Google Images.”

Forbes reports that Wojcicki “advocated for the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.”

Susan Wojcicki’s net worth is $750 million, according to Forbes.

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