'He was part of me.' Aaron Carter's twin sister on what it was like to lose him.

Aaron Carter's twin sister Angel has spoken out about what it was like to lose her brother at 34 years old.

Angel laid Aaron's ashes to rest after the teen pop star was found deceased in a bathtub in his Californian home on November 5, 2022. In an interview with PEOPLE, Angel opened up about the devastating experience.

"To lose a twin, it's an out-of-body experience. He's a part of me. And it was like when he died, I had this sense of, 'I've got to get him in my house. I've got to bring him home and protect him'," she said.

"For a few months after he died, it was my last way to protect him. I don't want anybody to do anything weird with him," she continued. 

"I can't trust that anybody else is not going to exploit him. So at that time, that was my last act of love."

Angel's words about 'protecting' Aaron after his death come as she revealed in another PEOPLE interview that she hadn't spoken to her mother, Jane Carter, since she released graphic images of Aaron’s death scene.

Jane said she released the images as she suspected the death was a homicide. In the disturbing photos released in March 2023, there appeared to be feces on the floor and a bathtub filled with green water.

“It was a true invasion of privacy and something that Aaron would’ve never wanted the public to see,” Angel said. 

In April this year, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner ruled Aaron's death as accidental. They attributed it to drowning after inhaling difluoroethane and taking alprazolam which goes by the brand-name Xanax.

Aaron was survived by Angel, his son Prince, as well as his older brother and Backstreet Boys' member Nick Carter. 

In the PEOPLE interview, Angel said that her parents abused alcohol which created a toxic family dynamic. She said it only got worse when Nick and Aaron's fame skyrocketed in the late-90s. 

“Fame and money took over our family,” Angel said.

Aaron's death followed his sister Leslie dying in 2012 from a drug overdose before their father, Robert Carter, died suddenly from an apparent heart attack in 2017. 

"I always felt like that was the beginning of the end,” Angel told PEOPLE. “Aaron was already in a bad place, but it was like a domino effect.”

After his father's death, Aaron checked himself into rehab, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Aaron's death followed legal troubles for the singer, as in July 2017 he was busted on DUI and marijuana charges. 

Angel now works with children’s mental health organisation On Our Sleeves. 

"We've got to not allow my brother and sister to die in vain and to use this as an example of what can happen. So many families are affected by this." 

Feature image: Getty.