Fiancé: ESPN reporter who died following pneumonia battle had Stage IV cancer

PHOENIX - New details surrounding the death of a 34-year-old ESPN reporter who contracted pneumonia have been revealed by his fiancé.

According to ESPN, Edward Aschoff, a radio and television reporter on college football for the network, died on December 24, 2019, which happened to be his 34th birthday.

Two days following his death, Aschoff's fiancé, Katy Berteau, posted on the late reporter's Instagram account, and said Aschoff was initially diagnosed with multifocal pneumonia, but after a failed antibiotic treatment and worsening of symptoms, he was diagnosed with a condition called HLH, which caused the immune system to attack other healthy tissues in the body.

On Wednesday, Aschoff's fiance made what she called a final post to the late reporter's social media account. In the posts, Berteau revealed that Aschoff, unbeknownst to others, had Stage IV Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in his lungs. The news came with results from the final lung biopsy Aschoff received.

"This is an aggressive type of cancer that is usually undetectable until it is very advanced," Berteau wrote. She also wrote that both pneumonia and Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma can trigger HLH.

"This is seemingly what happened with Edward," Berteau wrote. "All of this combined is what led to his very rapid decline those last few days, and ultimately his passing."

Berteau wrote that she went public with the information, because she believes Aschoff would have wanted others to know that "something way bigger than pneumonia took him down".

"I’m at least grateful he didn’t have to go through the painful treatment and drawn out process of battling the disease," Berteau wrote. "He wouldn’t have wanted to go out like that."

Aschoff and Berteau were originally scheduled to get married in April.