Thaddeus Farrow, son of popular actress Mia Farrow, died this Wednesday. He was 27.
Thaddeus was reported to have sustained a life-threatening injury in his car. The vehicle was found in Roxbury with an unconscious Thaddeus inside. He was later taken to the Danbury Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Now, the Associated Press has confirmed that Thaddeus died after he shot himself in the stomach. The death has been ruled a suicide.
Soon after this announcement, Mia Farrow took to Twitter to pay tribute to her late child.
— mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) September 22, 2016
“We’re devastated by the loss of Thaddeus, our beloved son and brother. He was a wonderful, courageous person who overcame so much hardship in his short life,” she wrote, “We miss him. Thank you for the outpouring of condolences and words of kindness.”
According to the AP, state police said that Thaddeus lived about 24 miles away from Roxbury, in Torrington. Public records indicate that he lived at his famous mother’s Bridgewater estate a few years ago, before moving out.
Thaddeus was adopted by Mia soon after her divorce from Woody Allen. He was 12 years old at the time and was a paraplegic due to Polio. In a 2013 feature in Vanity Fair, the Farrow family spoke at length about Thaddeus.
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“I witnessed a real example of redemption one day at Frog Hollow when Thaddeus came to visit,” Maureen Orth of Vanity Fair wrote, “As a paraplegic in Calcutta, he [Thaddeus] was discarded in a railway station and forced to crawl on his hands and stubs of legs to beg for food. Later, at an orphanage, he was chained to a post, and kids would throw rocks at him to prompt the mannish growls he made. When Mia saw him, she says, she had a powerful reaction: ‘That’s my son.’”
Thaddeus also spoke to Vanity Fair about his experiences coming into the family. “It was scary to be brought to a world of people whose language I did not understand, with different skin colours,” he said, “the fact that everyone loved me was a new experience, overwhelming at first.”
He showed promise as a mechanic but moved toward a career in law enforcement in his early twenties.
Thaddeus is the third to die of Farrow’s 14 children. Tam died of heart failure in 2000 and Lark, the first child adopted by Mia Farrow and her former husband André Previn, died in 2008.
Feature Image Courtesy: Vanity Fair