{"id":649059,"date":"2026-06-20T14:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T14:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649059\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T14:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T14:23:11","slug":"daveigh-chase-death-mother-of-former-child-star-says-she-was-drugged-out-of-her-mind-in-last-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649059\/","title":{"rendered":"Daveigh Chase death: Mother of former child star says she was \u2018drugged out of her mind\u2019 in last years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The former child star Daveigh Chase<\/a> was \u201cobviously drugged out of her mind\u201d in her last years, her grieving mother has said.<\/p>\n

Chase, who shot to fame in the early Noughties as the voice of Lilo in Disney\u2019s Lilo & Stitch and as the young villain of the horror movie The Ring, died this week at the age of 35<\/a>, following years of drug addiction and homelessness.<\/p>\n

In her first comments on her daughter\u2019s death, Chase\u2019s mother Cathy revealed that she had spent years desperately searching for her daughter, after she disappeared following stints in prison.<\/p>\n

Chase had been jailed in Los Angeles after being charged with two counts of burglary, and her mother noticed an extreme change in her daughter when she visited her in prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was completely gone, like, out of her mind,\u201d Cathy told The Daily Mail<\/a>. \u201cI honestly thought there was something wrong with her. My daughter was never diagnosed with mental health other than PTSD. But the drugs took hold of her.\u201d She added that Chase had been \u201cseeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people\u201d in the wake of injuring her back in a motorcycle accident in 2016, which she believes led to her becoming addicted to painkillers, then other drugs.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe former child star Daveigh Chase, who died this week, pictured in 2009 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Chase had agreed to be taken home by her mother upon release from prison, but was released a day early and fled before her mother\u2019s arrival. \u201cWhen I got there, she never waited,\u201d Cathy recalled. \u201cShe went back to the streets and I couldn\u2019t find her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy and another one of her children would spend time searching homeless encampments across Los Angeles looking for Chase, to no avail. \u201cIt upsets me because people are saying I must\u2019ve been a bad mother, but I never gave up on her,\u201d Cathy said. \u201cAs a mother, you don\u2019t give up on your child. I was hoping she would still come home.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that she finally received proof of her daughter\u2019s whereabouts when she was sent a video at the end of 2025 which appeared to show Chase frail and emaciated in an RV on Los Angeles\u2019 notorious Skid Row.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the video, she was in a really bad shape,\u201d Cathy said. \u201cShe was very frail. She was fragile. She was saying no, and trying to push the camera away, and they were shoving it in her face. It was gross. She was obviously drugged out of her mind. She was nothing but skin and bones and I didn\u2019t want to think that was my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA young Chase with the cast of \u2018The Ring\u2019 in 2002, including Naomi Watts and Brian Cox (Reuters)<\/p>\n

Cathy\u2019s comments echo those of Chase\u2019s former manager John Ryan, who revealed this week that he hadn\u2019t seen his client in a decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I thought she was kidnapped or something, and then we started putting two and two together,\u201d Ryan explained, adding that he had helped Chase into \u201ca couple rehabs back in the day,\u201d but that he and her friends weren\u2019t overly concerned about her sobriety.<\/p>\n

He said a missing persons report was never filed because Chase left of her own admission. He recalled seeing her occasionally make headlines, such as in 2017 when she was arrested for riding in a stolen car.<\/p>\n

It was only after seeing the same 2025 video online as Chase\u2019s mother had seen that he began a last, frantic search for Chase.<\/p>\n

The actor\u2019s death was announced this week by her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, who told TMZ that she died Tuesday (16 June) shortly after being hospitalised for malnutrition. Doctors informed Hernandez that Chase also had meningitis and a blood infection, which caused the septic issues which rapidly killed her.<\/p>\n

Chase, who hadn\u2019t acted since 2016, starred as Donnie Darko\u2019s little sister Samantha in the cult 2001 time travel film, and also appeared in TV series including Big Love, Charmed and ER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-649059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}