Legendary singer Achieng Abura was laid to rest this past weekend. Not long after that, the creative industry is mourning another death. A Kenyan actor, Odera Owiso, based in Hollywood collapsed while rehearsing on stage and was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Odera Owiso has starred in major Hollywood TV series like Minority Report where he stared as Malik Aziz, The Originals be played Papa Tunde in three episodes, and Numb3rs as Tate Gilliam.

According to The Standard, Odera collapsed and and efforts to resuscitate him failed thus he was pronounced dead a few minutes later. The Hollywood actor had spent the first week of October acting on location in Washington DC in a new stage work entitled Measure Plus Dido.

The on Sunday spoke to his brother on phone after news of his death broke.

“We are devastated by his demise. It is like a bad dream. I haven’t come to terms with the news of his death. This is unbearable,” said his youngest brother Peter Oruka Odera.

Owiso is the son of the respected scholar, the Late Prof Henry Odera Oruka whose death was equally tragic in 1995 at his peak as a Philosophy lecturer at the University of Nairobi. His father was the founder-president of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK) and also the founding-director of the International Institute of Environmental Studies(IIES), Nairobi.

The family is yet to establish what exactly killed the 43-year-old actor. Peter described his brother as a warm person who was in constant touch with his family in Kenya.

Odera is survived by his wife Nicole and siblings Roney, Sheilla, Sharon, Milly and Peter.