Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Saturday in Washington. He was 46.The cause was brain cancer. Mr. Biden had spent more than a week receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, where he died.
In a statement Saturday night, the vice president said, “It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.”The statement went on to say, “In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”Officials said in 2013 that the doctors in Texas had removed a small lesion from his brain.
Mr. Biden’s death is a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived.