LA coroner cites AIDS and chronic polydrug use as causes of death

Actor had been living on the streets of LA since stepping away from acting in 2016

A still from "The Ring" featuring Daveigh Chase. [DreamWorks Pictures]
A still from "The Ring" featuring Daveigh Chase. [DreamWorks Pictures]

Daveigh Chase, the actor who played the crawling girl ghost in the American horror film "The Ring" and voiced Lilo in the Disney animated film "Lilo & Stitch," died of AIDS, it has emerged.

The New York Times reported Sunday (local time) that the Los Angeles County coroner confirmed AIDS as Chase's cause of death. She died June 16 at a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 35. Chronic polydrug use was listed as a contributing factor.

At the time of her death, entertainment outlet TMZ and others had reported that Chase died of bacterial meningitis and sepsis caused by a blood infection. She had been hospitalized in Los Angeles earlier in June after suffering from malnutrition while living on the streets, and her condition had deteriorated in the days before her death.

Born in 1990, Chase rose to prominence at age 11 when she voiced Lilo in the 2002 Disney animated film "Lilo & Stitch." She reprised the role in "Stitch! The Movie," "Leroy & Stitch" and the television series "Lilo & Stitch: The Series," bringing the free-spirited Hawaiian girl to life across multiple projects. She also became widely recognized for voicing young female characters, including the lead character Chihiro in the American English dub of the Japanese animated film "Spirited Away."

Chase won the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain for her role as Samara Morgan — the girl who crawls grotesquely out of a television screen — in "The Ring," which starred Naomi Watts.

After her final acting credit in "Let It Die" in 2016, Chase cut ties with her family and had been living on the streets of Los Angeles. She died of complications from AIDS.


jshan@heraldcorp.com