Bill Cosby's daughter Ensa dies at 44
— -- Bill Cosby's daughter Ensa Cosby has died, ABC News confirmed. She was 44.
In a statement, the Cosby family said they thank "many people for their prayers for their beloved and beautiful Ensa, who recently died from renal disease."
According to the Mayo Clinic, renal disease is a chronic kidney disease, in which one gradually loses function of that organ.
Ensa Cosby was one of five children the 80-year-old comedian has had with his wife, Camille Cosby. She did not follow in her father's famous footsteps in comedy or acting, but according to IMDb, she did appear in one episode of "The Cosby Show" in 1989.
This is not the first time the Cosby family has lost a child. In 1997, Bill Cosby's only son, Ennis Cosby, was killed at the age of 27 in Los Angeles during a robbery attempt.
The news of the loss of his daughter also comes one week before Bill Cosby is due back in court on March 5 for a pretrial hearing in the retrial of his sexual assault case that took place last summer.
The first attempt by the district attorney from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to try the comedian for sexual assault ended in a mistrial. After six days of deliberation in June, the jury was unable to render a unanimous verdict on any of the three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault with which Bill Cosby had been charged.
The trial stems from accuser Andrea Constand's claim that in 2004, Cosby gave her a drug at his home in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, that rendered her unable to stop his alleged assaults.
Bill Cosby never took the stand during the trial and has pleaded not guilty. According to portions of a decade-old Bill Cosby deposition that was read aloud in court, Bill Cosby claims he gave Constand Benadryl to "relax" her during a consensual sexual encounter. He and his lawyers have always claimed his innocence in the case.
Ensa Cosby was always a supporter of her father's, releasing a statement last year to Sirius XM Radio that she believed her father was innocent of sexual assault and that, "Racism has played a big role in all aspects of this scandal."
Ensa Cosby is survived by her parents, and her siblings Erika, Erinn and Evin Cosby.
