Daveigh Chase’s boyfriend has broken his silence over the former child star’s death, rejecting allegations that he exploited her final illness and insisting he was the person closest to her during the last years of her life.
Roy Hernandez, 38, said he and Chase had planned to marry and that she accepted his proposal in 2024. He also disclosed the couple’s final conversation, claiming the actress told him: “I’m not afraid.”
Chase, who was 35, died in a Los Angeles hospital on June 16. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner recorded acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as the cause of death, with chronic polysubstance use listed as a significant contributing condition. Her death was classified as natural.
Her father, John Schwallier, had previously said she died after suffering bacterial meningitis and a blood infection. Her full toxicology findings have not been made public.
Hernandez came under scrutiny after launching a GoFundMe appeal shortly before Chase died. The fundraiser said she had been diagnosed with meningitis and serious blood infections, and sought money to help her live in comfort after leaving hospital. It raised about $4,500.
Chase’s family and former manager, John Ryan, have accused Hernandez of attempting to profit from her death. They questioned why money was being sought when the actress had a Screen Actors Guild trust account and other assets that could potentially have covered medical and funeral expenses.
Hernandez denied the accusations in an interview in Los Angeles, saying he had not received any of the GoFundMe money. He said the appeal had been discussed with Chase while she was in hospital and was intended to help them find somewhere to live.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean? She was perfectly fine when I left!’” Hernandez recalled, describing the moment doctors told him Chase had only hours to live.
Daveigh Chase death and the dispute over her final years
The interview took place in Elysian Park, where Hernandez said he and Chase used to go “to escape”. He said they first met at a mutual friend’s house in 2021 and became a couple within two months.
Hernandez claimed he did not initially realise Chase was a well-known actress. At the time, she had short hair and had not appeared in a film since 2016.
He disputed the family’s account that Chase had been homeless and living on Skid Row or moving between tents in Los Angeles. Instead, he said they spent five years living together in his recreational vehicle, travelling with their two dogs and visiting his mother in East Los Angeles for meals and showers.
“She was always happy,” he said. “She made me really happy.”
Chase’s parents have painted a far more troubling picture of her condition. In footage filmed in 2025, she appeared severely emaciated and in very poor health. Schwallier said the video made it difficult to accept Hernandez’s claim that she had been properly cared for.
“He had to have known how sick Daveigh was because in that video, she looked to be only 80 pounds,” he said.
Chase’s mother, Cathy, described her daughter in the footage as “nothing but skin and bones”. Hernandez insisted she was fed, but said she sometimes hid food and resisted going to hospital despite repeated encouragement from him and his mother.
“You can’t force somebody to go if they don’t want to go,” he said.
Hernandez also rejected claims that he encouraged Chase’s drug use. He said he never took drugs with her and never saw her using them during their relationship, although he acknowledged she had used substances, including fentanyl, before they met.
He said Chase had told him she used drugs to cope with painful memories from her past, including an alleged 2021 kidnapping and sexual assault in a Los Angeles hotel. Chase did not report that allegation to police.
Hernandez said he had instead tried to protect her from drugs and from the issues that had troubled her for years. Chase’s mother has said her problems began after a motorcycle accident around 2016, when she was prescribed powerful painkillers for a back injury.
From 2018 to 2024, Chase was arrested several times on drug possession and other charges. Hernandez suggested that her childhood, her relationship with her parents and the pressures of growing up in Hollywood had also contributed to her decline.
He claimed Chase rarely spoke about her father and had told him she believed Schwallier was dead because her mother had allegedly said so. Schwallier has claimed that Cathy kept their daughter away from him for years.
Both parents are now involved in a legal dispute over Chase’s estate, which is estimated to be worth about $400,000. Court filings submitted in Los Angeles in July state that Chase died without a will and left personal property valued at around that amount, with no real property listed.
At a hearing in downtown Los Angeles, Chase’s parents said they intended to pursue competing petitions over control of the estate. Ryan, her former manager, has backed a request for a professional fiduciary to administer it and is also seeking money he says he is owed for his work.
Hernandez has not yet filed documents seeking control of the estate, but said Chase had told him she wanted her money to go to him or to animal charities. He claimed she did not believe either of her parents deserved it.
“She and I never really cared about the money,” Hernandez said. “I know she probably would’ve wanted me to have it, but that’s what we had talked about previously. She wanted to take the money and go on trips, to take us away from here.”
He also claimed Chase was afraid to collect residual payments from commercials, films and television programmes because she feared her mother would discover the money and try to take it.
The claims have not been tested in court. Cathy Chase has been contacted for comment, while Hernandez declined to discuss his own criminal record. He pleaded no contest to a firearms possession charge in 2024 and was sentenced to three days in jail in March 2026.
Hernandez said Chase spent the final two weeks of her life in hospital, where her condition fluctuated. He recalled her struggling to speak, with sores and dried blood in her mouth.
He said that on the day before her death she was coherent enough to discuss the GoFundMe and their plans for life after her discharge. The following morning, doctors told him she was dying.
“The next day is when they called me and they told me in the morning that she had like only hours,” he said, fighting back tears.
Chase became known around the world after voicing Lilo in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch in 2002. That same year, she played the ghostly Samara Morgan in The Ring, a role she reprised in The Ring Two. She also appeared in Donnie Darko, Spirited Away and television series including ER, Charmed and Big Love.
Recalling their final exchange, Hernandez said Chase asked whether he was afraid.
“She told me, ‘I’m not afraid,’” he said. “She said, ‘You’re not afraid either, right?’ I told her, ‘No, you’re right. I’m not afraid.’”
