Actress Kirstie Alley’s death on Monday came as a shock to fans, but in a statement released on Twitter her children shared that the “Cheers” star had been battling cancer albeit “only recently discovered.”
Alley had received treatment at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida and her rep later confirmed to People that the 71-year-old actress had died of colon cancer, a disease that saw more than 106,000 new cases this year alone, according to the American Cancer Society. It is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States outside of skin cancers.
