Man who was homeless with child star Daveigh Chase shares gutting details about her final years

Though Daveigh Chase got her start in projects like Lilo & Stitch and The Ring, she spent the final years of her life homeless on LA’s Skid Row.

Daveigh’s mum recently revealed that her daughter’s drug addiction came after a motorcycle accident in 2016. Her reliance on painkillers like oxycodone soon brought her into contact with the “wrong people.”

“She was seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people. I never kicked my daughter out. She wanted freedom and these people got her hooked on some drugs. That was the beginning,” her mum, Cathy Chase, said.

Though Daveigh’s loved ones frequently attempted to find and help her, she remained homeless until being hospitalised for malnutrition. She died soon after, having developed a blood infection and meningitis.

“I let out this guttural scream and I just was running,” her mum added. “And these weird sounds were coming out of me, these kind of, like, primeval sounds. And I went out into the backyard, and I was screaming, ‘No, no, no, no!’ I am in so much pain but I hope her soul heard me.”

This man was friends with a homeless Daveigh Chase

For much of her later life, Daveigh Chase lived on Skid Row, LA’s largest and most densely populated area of homeless people.

Shawn Rosenthal was friends with Daveigh when he, too, had issues with substances. Though he’s clean now, he said Daveigh’s friendship left a lasting impression on him.

“I was pretty close to Daveigh from around 2018 to 2023. She was an incredible singer, and we would play music together that, unfortunately, we never had a chance to record,” he told PEOPLE. “I wound up getting clean in 2023, which is why I haven’t seen her since then. Some of her sober friends and I were trying to find her and get her help, but to no avail. She was surrounding herself with the worst of the worst people. It’s such a tragedy because no one cared for her best interests at all.”

Echoing other comments from the people who knew her, Shawn admitted the former actress was “unrecognisable” in her final years.

“I feared hearing this news. I pray she’s just finally at peace,” he added.

Similarly, Skid Row’s self-declared mayor earlier said: “Well, she was getting more thin every time I seen her, she was getting thinner, and that let me know that she had a disease that was unarrested, and she needed help,” he added. “And she couldn’t get the help fast enough before the disease took her life.”

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