William Friend may not be a name many associate with celebrity, but seeing as he was married to “One Tree Hill” star Bevin Prince, his story made international news. On July 3, 2022, Friend was on a boat with his family near Masonboro Island, North Carolina, when he was struck by lightning. People in a nearby vessel offered assistance and flagged down some deputies who performed CPR on Friend and transported him to a nearby marina to be taken care of by EMS.
According to WECT-TV reporting, he was transported to an ambulance, where EMS workers continued resuscitation efforts on Friend, but to no avail. Friend was declared dead, and family members identified his body at the hospital. Friend and Prince married in 2016, and he died less than a week before his 34th birthday. Prince remained silent until later in the year, when she told Jon Evans on his podcast, “It was like any other day that we’d done a million times. The storm was far away, we’re on the boat, everything’s fine. And then, in an instant, everything has changed. There’s no normal, and there’s no playbook for it.”
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In the wake of his death, Friend’s family established a memorial fund on GoFundMe, hoping to raise $250,000. The GoFundMe campaign raised more than $95,000 for two causes Friend supported: his business Recess, which he and Prince established in their North Carolina Home, and the Special Operators Transition Foundation, which supports veterans entering the private sector.
