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’.”

READ MORE: West London mum gives birth to a second child with her husband despite him dying 16 months ago

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.

The family is still waiting to find out how he died

“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.

Liam's family says he could have been a music superstar

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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The London borough building so many council homes they account for 1 in 3 currently under construction in England

One of England’s most crowded boroughs is building one in three of the country’s new council homes, new stats show. Work started on 726 council homes in Southwark last year, according to government figures despite the borough already having crammed in a lot of housing, and the council being the bigest local authority landlord in London.

Across all of England, construction began on 2,234 new council houses in the same period. It means a third of all council homes started last year are in Southwark, which is the seventh most densely populated area in England. Southwark Council hopes the new properties will help house some of the 17,200 people currently waiting for a council house in the borough.

Jordan McLaughlin, 24, moved into one of 10 newly built council homes on Welsford Street in Bermondsey last year. Mr McLaughlin, his mother and sister had previously been sharing a cramped two-bedroom council flat around the corner and needed somewhere bigger.

READ MORE: South London council must pay families £10k after it left one with no heating for 6 months and failed to fix leak

Council homes under construction on Galleywall Road in Bermondsey (Image: Robert Firth)

He said: “We’re just really happy as a family that these new builds came to fruition. It makes life a lot more comfortable. We needed the space. This place has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s perfect for us.

“It has made our family life easier; we aren’t on top of each other. We aren’t arguing about space. We have separate bathrooms to get ready and there’s enough space in the kitchen so that we can do what we need to do.”

He added: “Every single part of this house is an improvement. The only thing we don’t have which we did at the old place is parking. I’m having to use visitor permits at the moment.”

Rajni, 34, moved into another of the Welsford Street homes with her husband last year. They had previously been living in a third floor council flat near East Street Market in Walworth, but it had become unsuitable after her husband had a stroke which left him paralysed and reliant on a wheelchair.

She said: “Everything is better here. It’s much more suitable for my husband. He couldn’t access the third floor in the flat after the stroke. He spent a year and a half in hospital and eight months in a care home.

“We had only one room in the previous flat. There was no life, no nothing. He has hope now. We have a garden here and two bedrooms and a bathroom. It’s much better for a wheelchair.”

Her neighbour Debbie Hastilow, 63, downsized from a council flat on nearby Camilla Road. She said: “It’s lovely. I was living on an estate before and we had problems with antisocial behaviour. There were youths outside the kitchen window and had a big knife at the bottom of our garden.

“I was looking to move for three to four years. I couldn’t believe when these came up, especially for council tenants. I thought they would be private.”

Newly finished council homes on Ivy Church Lane behind the Old Kent Road (Image: Robert Firth)

Southwark Council claims it has the most ambitious council house building programme of anywhere in Britain, according to its website. Labour, which controls the council, promised to build 11,000 new council homes by 2043 in the run-up to the 2014 local elections.

But a council report from February cast doubt on whether this would be possible. The document said the council didn’t have enough money to build 11,000 homes by 2043 and blamed the apparent sidestepping of the pledge on surging construction costs and the rising cost of borrowing. The 11,000 pledge remains on the council’s website.

Building more council homes also doesn’t mean the number of council properties in Southwark is increasing. Government figures show there were 1,346 fewer council homes in the borough as of 2022 than in 2014 when the 11,000 pledge was made.

Right to buy, a government policy that allows council tenants to purchase their property, as well as council homes being knocked down as part of estate regeneration programmes in the borough has resulted in a net loss of homes.

The council homes on Welsford Street, Bermondsey were built on the site of former garages (Image: Robert Firth)

But for the residents who have moved into the new council homes built by Southwark, the properties have been life changing. Mum-of-three, Zohra Chahuoat, and her family moved into one of 17 new flats built on the Goschen estate in Camberwell last July.

She said: “In our old flat we were overcrowded. It was small and one bedroom. This has three bedrooms. I was waiting for about four years to find somewhere bigger for us. The space is very good.”

Councillor Kieron Williams, leader of Southwark Council, said: “Having a home is not an optional extra in life, it’s an essential. That’s why we’ve made building genuinely affordable homes our first priority in Southwark, with over three thousand new council homes built or under construction across our borough, more than any other council.

“We’re investing in these new council homes because we know they’ll transform lives for generations to come with their low rents and lifetime tenancies standing in stark contrast to London’s broken and unaffordable private rented sector. It’s been hard work to get here, but we are now building council homes on a scale not seen in our country since the seventies.”

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London woman quits job to run her side hustle full time and make 'six figure sum' despite finding solo work 'lonely'

A London woman has shared the reality of what life involves for an entrepreneur looking to make a success of a side hustle business full time. Shoshanna Davis has quit her corporate job to instead focus on running the Fairy Job Mother, where she offers career advice and mentoring to young people.

While Shoshanna, 28, hopes to pay herself a six-figure salary she's admitted the first three months running the solo business have involved a lot of "trial and error" plus she's had to get used to the loneliness of working alone. Shoshanna says she is still confident about the future after leaving technology firm Intel in January to take her company full time.

She started Fairy Job Mother in October 2020 to offer a "one stop shop" of careers advice to sixth form and university students. It also runs consulting services and interactive workshops for employers, schools and universities.

READ MORE: 'I came to London from Poland with £200 and a bike - now I'm worth millions'

Shoshanna says there are "so many unrealistic expectations flying around business and careers" (Image: Shoshanna Davis / SWNS)

It has since grown to a following of 20,000 by sharing careers advice resources across TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn - and Shoshanna aims to eventually pay herself a six-figure salary. Shoshanna, who moved from London to Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, a year ago, said: “You see on social media stuff like ‘I’ve just made my first six figures working in Bali and this is how you can do it too’ which obviously puts everyone else under a lot of pressure.

“You think ‘why am I not making that?’ but most of the time it’s just bullsh*t and people are saying that to sell their online courses. There are so many unrealistic expectations flying around business and careers.

“Social media is definitely a highlight reel and I see so much of that on TikTok and Instagram. I just want to be honest and hope to help other people in the same position, struggling or the first few months have been hard, and they feel like they’re the only one and are doing something wrong.

“I failed my A-Levels and ended up getting into university through clearing as all of my offers rejected me. I had to phone up my uni and beg them to accept me, which they eventually did.

“I started with that disadvantage so something I wanted to do was try and get as much experience as I could. When I graduated, I thought I’d love to start a platform to help others do the same but I’d just started a busy corporate job which involved a lot of travel, so I didn’t have the time. But then Covid hit and travelling went to zero, so I started it and now have an online community of 20,000 people.”

Shoshanna joined Intel in August 2017 after graduating from London South Bank University with a degree in marketing. She left in January 2023 to be a full-time entrepreneur and says the biggest weights on her mind are the loneliness of working alone and the risk of depending on herself for work.

Shoshanna Davis has shared her top five tips for anyone looking to start a new business (Image: © Shoshanna Davis / SWNS)

She said: “At the time Fairy Job Mother was taking up a lot of my time and I was very busy at work and very busy with both. I got burnt out loads of times and just thought ‘I’m going to take a massive risk and take it full-time’. It was and is very risky.

“One of the things I’m quite up front about is a lot of people assume I must be making loads but I’m not making the same money as I would in full-time corporate work. Usually, I work from home which is quite lonely as an entrepreneur. I’m originally from London and only moved to Cheltenham a year ago so it can get lonely, but I’ve joined a co-working space to potentially meet some new people which I’m excited about.

“The first month was February and I had quite a few things planned. I was invited to an event at the House of Commons for national apprenticeship week and I had two or three paid speakerships booked.

“But I ended up getting really ill and being bed-bound for two weeks. So, month one was pretty much a write-off because if you don’t attend things, you don’t get paid. For me one of the things I’ve had to do in March and April is take a step back and look at processes I need to put in place to start making more money. When I was working full-time, I didn’t have time.

“It’s about refining my offering, carrying out market research and speaking to employers. The first few months have been trial and error and also making some quite expensive investments. I may not see the money for a while but they’re worth it like getting a new website built and working with a business coach. But I’m absolutely confident about the future. You have to be. Mindset is everything.”

Shoshanna joined Intel in August 2017 after graduating from London South Bank University with a degree in marketing. She left in January 2023 to be a full-time entrepreneur (Image: © Shoshanna Davis / SWNS)

Shoshanna's top five tips for starting a business:

1. Empathise and understand - Speak to as many people in your target audience as possible to understand their challenges, perspective and if it is a genuine business opportunity.

2. Refine your idea - Use your research and knowledge of your target audience to refine your initial idea.

3. Write a business plan - Ask yourself these three important questions: What is the purpose of your business? Who are you selling to? What are your goals?

4. Assess your finances - Do you have the means to fund your business, or will you need to borrow money? If you plan to leave your current job to focus on your business, do you have savings to support yourself until you make a profit?

5. Progress over perfection - Your idea will never be instantly perfect. Focus first on bringing it to the market and getting feedback. You can always make changes later.

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