Bill Cosby reacts to Malcolm-Jamal Warner's death: Report

"The Cosby Show’s" embattled patriarch, Bill Cosby, shared that the untimely death of his co-star, Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable), reminded him of his own late son’s death, according to a TMZ report.

Warner died at age 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, according to local authorities.

Cosby’s representative, Andrew Wyatt, told TMZ that Warner’s death brought him back to January 1997, when he got a call informing him that his son, Ennis Cosby, was killed in an attempted robbery.

Ennis Cosby killed

The backstory:

Cosby’s then-27-year-old son, Ennis, a graduate student at Columbia University, was shot to death while changing a flat tire near a freeway off ramp in Los Angeles. 

A 22-year-old man was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Warner dies in accidental drowning

Dig deeper:

Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Monday that Warner drowned Sunday afternoon on a beach on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. He was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the ocean.

What they're saying:

"He was rescued by people on the beach," the department's initial report said, but first responders from Costa Rica’s Red Cross found him without vital signs and he was taken to the morgue.

Warner and ‘Cosby Show’ legacy

Like the rest of the "Cosby Show" cast, Warner had to contend with the sexual assault allegations against its titular star, whose conviction in a Pennsylvania court was later overturned.

Warner told the Associated Press in 2015 that the show's legacy was "tarnished."

"My biggest concern is when it comes to images of people of color on television and film," Warner said. "We've always had ‘The Cosby Show’ to hold up against that. And the fact that we no longer have that, that’s the thing that saddens me the most because in a few generations the Huxtables will have been just a fairy tale."