Family heartbroken after daredevil son, 23, found dead on the floor and they have no idea why
A heartbroken family has paid tribute to their amazingly brave son and brother, who ‘would have been a music superstar’. Liam Stone, 23, from Hayes, West London, went from surviving a horrific road accident in childhood to enjoying daredevil stunts like dangling off cranes with one hand. But on April 27, without any warning, he was found lying face down on his bedroom floor.
Liam’s devastated mum Eve Hennessey, 46, told MyLondon they still do not know what caused him to pass away that day. “I had got up to go to work as usual and thought nothing of it,” she said. “Later Liam’s nan called me to say I needed to come home quickly because Liam had had an accident. So straight away I thought ‘he’s come off the scooter I got him for Christmas’.”
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Eve continued: “I got back to the house and all these police cars were outside. They said to me ‘he’s gone’ and I said ‘what do you mean he’s gone?’ And then they told me he had passed away in his bedroom suddenly.”
According to Liam’s girlfriend, who was the last person with him, he was acting completely normal. He got up, had a bath and said he was going to work on a new song in his bedroom studio. Liam’s girlfriend then told him she was popping out to the local sun bed shop and asked if she should take the house keys, to which Liam insisted he would stay put and let her in.
After coming back from town, his girlfriend began knocking on the front door. There was no answer. At first, she wasn’t too worried - it was normal for Liam not to hear the door, especially when he was in the studio or had his headphones on. But then she started calling his mobile, and there was still no answer.
Growing increasingly concerned, she ran up to a neighbour and they managed to get in round the back. She then went upstairs and that’s when she found Liam lying face down, already passed away.
Eve says an initial post-mortem has been done which involved taking samples of Liam’s heart, brain and spleen. They still do not know what caused his death and they have been told it could take several months for the results to come through.
“It doesn’t feel real,” Eve said. “I spoke to him on the phone two hours before he died and I told him I loved him and he said love you too. We just don’t understand how this could happen. He was so active. He went to the gym. Obviously, he sat still when he was doing his music but generally, he was always moving.
“And he was so into his health. He used to moan at me if I got a bottle of flavoured water and say ‘do you know how much sugar is in that?’ He would buy all these cases of pure water.”
While Liam was in good health towards the end of his life, he was run over at the age of 11 which left him with temporary brain trauma.
“He’d broken up from school for half term and on the Saturday he was crossing a main road and he was hit by a Range Rover that had overtaken a bus and not seen him,” Eve explained. “He ended up on life support at Great Ormond Street. At one point they didn’t think he was going to pull through.”
Liam suffered a fractured skull, a bleed on the brain, collapsed lungs and a perforated ear drum. But, defying all the odds, he survived. This was followed by months of recovery which involved learning how to walk again.
Initially, Liam’s family noticed personality changes. He would forget things and the quiet, happy little boy they knew began having mood swings. This turned out to be caused by a traumatic brain injury.
“We were told by doctors that it could get worse as he grew up or it could get better or stay the same” Eve said. “Luckily he got better. And within a year he was pretty much fully recovered. He bounced back incredibly well.”
Doctors said one of the possible side effects of a brain injury is that you no longer feel fear. And as Liam entered his teenage years, this certainly became the case. He took up parkour, joining his local free running club where he would do adrenaline-fuelled stunts.
“We got Liam a trampoline for the garden but then he began using the neighbours’ fences to somersault off,” Eve said. “He would do the craziest things, to the point where it got surreal. He would go with friends from the gym and hang off cranes with one hand.
“The local car park in Uxbridge had to seal off the top of that because he kept hanging off of it. He could do backflips along the road. He could jump off bins. Nothing was high enough for him.”
Parkour wasn’t Liam’s only talent. He was also extremely talented at music and from the age of 13, he started rapping.
“He would tell me ‘I’m going to do music one day and I’m going to go far’ and I said ‘you probably will and I’ll support you’,” Eve recalled.
After leaving school, Liam invested in an Apple laptop and downloaded software to edit his voice. He then got a professional microphone and soundproofing to make his bedroom into a studio. Eve says he would spend hours, sometimes even the whole night, writing songs and teaching himself how to mix tracks. He came up with the rapper name ‘Risk’, inspired by his devil-may-care attitude to life.
Last year, Liam’s hard work started to pay off. He managed to contact rapper RD’s cameraman who was impressed by his songs and offered to film his first music video.
“I remember he told me ‘I have a music video shoot’ and I said to him ‘you are joking?’” Eve continued. “The video which he uploaded to his Youtube channel got 1,000 hits in one week, and I told him ‘you’re going to go somewhere’. He said: ‘I know’.
“The thing with Liam was he didn’t want to be famous. It was literally the passion for the music. And that’s why he performed under a different name. He didn’t want people to follow his music for who he was. He just wanted them to enjoy it.”
Liam had two more video shoots after that, and he was gaining more and more traction. Then this year, he was asked to film his biggest video yet in a London studio with two friends. This was due to take place on May 21.
Aside from his love of music, the thing that drove Liam was the love he had for his family.
“He wanted to give his three sisters and all of us a nice life,” Eve said. ‘I remember he would tell me he was definitely going to buy me a house. And there’s this lyric in one of his songs where he says ‘I’m not going to stop until I make my mum 10 million’.”
Liam was also hugely popular and would do anything to help his friends. Eve continued: “I’ve had so many messages since his passing. One of Liam’s friends had mental health issues and he told me that he wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Liam. I’ve got posted notes on the bouquets of flowers, saying things like ‘thank you for lending me your coat when it was raining’.”
She added: “Some of Liam’s friends were going in the wrong direction and he said to them ‘buckle up, stop getting into trouble’. And then they got jobs. They’ve told me how Liam helped them emotionally, mentally, financially. He would literally go above and beyond to help people.”
Showing just how valued he was, some of Liam’s friends or as he called them ‘brothers’ organised a get-together in the local park on 6 May with fireworks, smoke flares and balloons. Over 300 people attended, and during the service, a few friends rode in on motorbikes with number plates that said ‘rest in peace Liam’.
“It went without a hitch,” Eve said. “The fireworks went off, there were speeches from people who had known Liam for years. I cannot thank the boys enough for organising it all. It was truly amazing.”
Eve has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover the costs of Liam's funeral.
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