Actress Daveigh Chase, known for her voice work in the original Lilo & Stitch as well as her role in the cult favorite Donnie Darko, tragically died last week at the age of 35 and her mother has now revealed the events that led to her death.
Chase died from meningitis and an infection in her blood after she had been admitted to the hospital in Los Angeles a month earlier for malnutrition. Prior to that, she had been living homeless on Skid Row with her boyfriend. Speaking with the Daily Mail, her mother, Cathy, revealed that her daughter became addicted to drugs following a 2016 motorcycle accident when doctors prescribed her oxycodone among other painkillers to help with a back injury. The prescription led to severe substance abuse and a downward spiral.
“She was seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people,” she said. “I never kicked my daughter out. She wanted freedom and these people got her hooked on some drugs. That was the beginning.”
Cathy added that she had not seen her daughter since October 2019, following which, the actress became embroiled in several legal trouble.
“I honestly thought there was something wrong with her,” Chase’s mother said. “She was completely gone, like, out of her mind,” she said. “The drugs took hold of her.”
While Cathy would try to pick her daughter up from jail upon release, the actress was gone by the time she arrived. She often blamed herself until chaplain gave her some clarity.
“I am a mother who loved her daughter so much,” she said. “But when I got there, she never waited. She went back to the streets and I couldn’t find her,” she added. “I will live forever feeling I failed her because they told me the wrong time when she was released [from jail] all those years ago.”
Upon learning of her daughter’s death, Cathy refused to believe it until she identified the remains. She recalls praying over her body at the hospital.
“I was devastated,” she said. “It felt like something inside of me squeezing all of the air out of me, and at the same time, It felt like I was exploding outwardly.”