On August 4, 2026, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, 48, frightened his followers as he committed horrifying acts of self-mutilation with a knife on a TikTok livestream.
After receiving multiple 911 calls, emergency responders arrived at his location and transported him to a local hospital, where he reportedly underwent surgery.
Real name Mario Lavandeira, Jr., Perez Hilton rose to fame in the mid-2000s for his controversial celebrity pop-culture coverage.
His sister, Barbara Lavandeira, was visiting from California and was the one to discover Hilton after he inflicted the injuries on himself.
Days after the incident, Barbara opened up about her firsthand account of the harrowing episode.
“August 4 will forever be one of the darkest days my family and I have ever experienced,” Barbara said.
Warning: The content below contains graphic details. Reader discretion is advised.
Perez Hilton’s sister could not “recognize” him after she found him cut up and bloodied
Openly identifying as a gay man from the beginning of his career, Perez Hilton had three kids via surrogacy: Mario Armando III, 13, Mia Alma, 11, and Mayte Amor, 8.
At the time of the incident, all three of his children were present at their Miami residence, where he moved back to earlier in 2026 after surviving a series of critical health problems.
Earlier in the afternoon, Barbara found Hilton’s bedroom door locked, which was unusual. She knocked, and Hilton told her he was fine.
“But something felt wrong,” Barbara told Page Six.
“I unlocked his bedroom door and realized he was inside the bathroom. I knocked several more times and told him I was going to come in if he didn’t open the door. He still didn’t answer, so I unlocked it.”
“When I opened the door, my nightmare became a reality,” she continued. “Mario was standing in front of the shower, n**ed, cut up, covered in blood, with a box cutter in his hand.”
“What I can say with certainty is that I didn’t recognize my brother when I looked at him. I saw it in his eyes. They didn’t look the same,” she said.
“Then, a split second later, he smiled at me. It felt like I was staring at someone else.”
Barbara responded to the “painful” karma comments some have made about Hilton’s crisis
The first thing Barbara did was gather the kids, run out of the house, and dial 911.
“I left the room, grabbed the car keys, and yelled for the kids to run to the car. Thankfully, our mom wasn’t home at the time, and I was able to get everyone out quickly,” she said.
While she was on the phone with dispatch, she texted her best friend, who lives nearby, to take the kids away from the scene.
Once the children left, she went back into the house and placed towels over Hilton to help stop the bleeding as she waited for the ambulance.
“He had already lost a significant amount of blood, yet he was somehow still able to speak, although his voice was very faint,” Barbara shared.
She also addressed the hateful comments some have made about Hilton’s predicament, where they called it “karma” because of the way he once sensationalized celebrities’ personal struggles.
“Mario has publicly acknowledged the harm he caused earlier in his career,” Barbara argued.
“I don’t believe someone should be reduced forever to the worst things they did in their past, especially when they’ve admitted the harm and genuinely tried to grow.”
Close friend believes Perez Hilton’s difficult childhood fueled his vicious media persona
Jorge Perez Jr., a longtime friend of Hilton’s, told the outlet that the gossip blogger himself faced bullying as a child, and his infamous takedowns of public figures might have been him projecting his own experience.
“It’s not about condoning or justifying, but understanding that, a lot of the time, we repeat the trauma that we had,” Perez Jr. said. “People were just really evil to him growing up.”
Some, like America’s Next Top Model alum Adrianne Curry, have shown compassion to Perez Hilton despite his alleged targeting of her for years.
“He bullied me and got the public to bully me… I forgive you, I don’t think you should be hurting yourself, and I hope you get f***ing better,” she said in an Instagram video.
But a whole lot of netizens have still not forgiven him for his past acts, such as selling custom T-shirts that said, “Why couldn’t it be Britney [Spears]?” after the demise of Heath Ledger due to substance intoxication.
Though the negative commentary is significant, Perez Hilton is currently being shielded from it, according to an insider.
“The family is now protecting him from himself,” the insider told the Daily Mail, adding that Hilton now feels “mortified” about what he has done. “He doesn’t need to see the lowest point of his life, especially not this soon afterward.”
“If he sees the comments that he brought it on himself, or people who wish him harm, that will do more harm than good to him,” the source added. “He really needs support right now.”
Perez Hilton was seeing a therapist after months of intense health battles
Perez Hilton’s inner circle believes that the self-injury incident might have been triggered by post-sepsis psychiatric disorder, according to Page Six.
The condition, which affects up to 50% of sepsis survivors, can cause “new or worsened physical, cognitive, and psychological problems for months to years after hospital discharge,” according to the Sepsis Alliance.
Hilton was hospitalized in March 2026 after taking flu medication on an empty stomach. He developed an ulcer, followed by an organ perforation and eventually sepsis, and had to spend three weeks in the hospital.
“His body became septic, he coded, and he nearly d**d several times,” Barbara said. “He underwent abdominal surgery, had fluid drained from around his lungs twice, and then had to recover from surgery and begin physical therapy.”
A month later, he landed in the ER again and underwent emergency surgery for a massive blood clot.
The health battles had been “traumatic and horrific” for me, a source told Page Six at the time.
Hilton moved from Las Vegas to Miami to be close to family, but then worried it was a financial drain on top of the medical bills. His family convinced him to seek professional help for his mental health struggles.
“A few weeks later, he met with a psychiatrist and was prescribed a low dose of an antidepressant,” she said. “He was depressed, but he was trying. He was anxious, but he was doing what he could to get better.”
Hilton was admitted to hospital once again just days before the incident
Things were looking slightly better for Mario, or so his family thought, but about two weeks before the August 4 incident, he revealed that was not the case.
“He told us that a few days earlier, he had felt empty, hopeless, and like he was a burden on everyone,” Barbara said. “He then admitted that one night when he couldn’t sleep, he had taken the remaining painkillers from his surgery in March. He said he just wanted to sleep.”
“Hearing that broke my heart. I thanked him for being strong enough to tell us, but I also told him that he needed proper psychiatric help. He agreed, and I took him to the hospital that same day.”
Hilton went voluntarily, and the hospital discharged him after several days of evaluation and treatment
He returned to therapy the day before he cut himself, and on the day of, completed an intake call for an outpatient program set to begin next week.
“There could have been so many things involved, including severe depression, the lingering effects of his hospitalization and sepsis, not sleeping, possible medication reactions, and the combination of prescription and over-the-counter medications he took that day,” Barbara speculated about what might have changed things for Hilton.
As for Hilton’s recovery, Barbara said that it would take time and the family did not have a timeline at the moment.
“This is not a quick fix,” an insider told the Daily Mail. “But as it sinks in what he did to himself, there will be a lot of trauma and baggage for him to unpack. Everyone close to him has been warned that he will be very fragile for a long time.”
“Prayers for his whole family.” The internet reacted to Perez Hilton injuring himself on livestream
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