Her face launched two of the most beloved pop culture franchises of the early 2000s. Now, weeks after her death, the conversation around Daveigh Chase has grown into something far more uncomfortable than grief.
Chase, known for roles in The Ring and Lilo & Stitch, passed away on June 16, 2026, from complications of bacterial meningitis and a blood infection. Her father, John David Schwallier, confirmed the news to the New York Times, stating she died in a Los Angeles hospital. She was 35.
Chase made her film debut as Samantha Darko in the 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko and went on to voice Lilo in Lilo & Stitch and Lilo & Stitch: The Series. Horror audiences knew her best for her haunting performance as Samara Morgan, the central antagonist in The Ring, a role that earned her an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. She also voiced Chihiro Ogino in the American dub of Spirited Away. Few child performers of that era left an imprint across that many touchstone projects.
Friends and family had been trying desperately to help her in the months before her death, including hiring a private investigator to find her. At the time of her hospitalization, Chase had been homeless and severely malnourished on Skid Row in Los Angeles. TMZ reported she had been admitted to a hospital earlier that month for malnutrition. Boyfriend Roy Hernandez told TMZ that the infections led to sepsis and "her body shutting down."
Chase's former manager, John Ryan, described her final months as a "tortured existence." Ryan told reporters he had spoken with Chase by phone after locating her through a private investigator, but she disappeared before he could reach her on Skid Row, with plans to eventually send her to a rehabilitation facility in Costa Rica.
The mourning has been complicated by a separate, older piece of footage. In the resurfaced 2003 MTV Movie Awards backstage clip, Sean "Diddy" Combs, then 33, approaches a 12-year-old Chase and asks, "You coming to the after-party tonight?" She appears to nod, and Combs laughs and responds with an emphatic "Yeah!" Chase never publicly commented on the footage, and there is no confirmed evidence that she attended any after-party involving Combs.
Combs was convicted in July 2025 on two felony counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and sentenced to 50 months in federal prison, currently housed at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey. Following Chase's death, users began circulating the old clip widely, with many questioning the exchange in light of his legal troubles. A representative for Combs previously denied wrongdoing in connection with the resurfaced footage, saying the moment had been misrepresented.
A GoFundMe launched by Hernandez added another layer of dispute. In a statement to Deadline, Ryan pushed back against the campaign, urging the public not to donate and stating that Chase's estate already had sufficient resources to cover her arrangements. Ryan identified Chase's father as her legal next of kin and stated that no legal authority had been granted to any individual claiming to be her boyfriend.
Ryan also said that Chase's addiction to heroin and fentanyl had left her unable to access what he described as millions of dollars in unclaimed Disney acting residuals, with SAG-AFTRA records repeatedly showing unpaid funds in her name. The full circumstances of her final years, and the systems that failed to reach her, are unlikely to leave the conversation any time soon.
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