UPDATE, 9/23: Thaddeus Wilk Farrow, the 27-year-old, paraplegic son of actress Mia Farrow, fatally shot himself in the torso before being found in his vehicle along a Connecticut road, the state medical examiner’s office ruled Thursday.
Thaddeus was found seriously wounded in his vehicle in Roxbury on Wednesday, about 8 miles from his mother’s home in neighbouring Bridgewater. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
The medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death was suicide during an autopsy. State police had said there was no criminal element to the death.
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Mia Farrow’s son, Thaddeus Wilk Farrow, died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut after suffering life-threatening injuries, police told the Hartford Courant. He was 27 years old.
According to the newspaper, the actress’ son was found in his car Wednesday afternoon and police are investigating his death, which they said had “no criminal aspect.” A cause of death has not yet been released.
Thaddeus, one of Farrow’s 10 adopted children, was left a paraplegic after his battle with polio when he was still living in Calcutta, India, as a child.
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The 71-year-old adopted Thaddeus in 1994 from an Indian orphanage at the age of 12, following her split from Woody Allen, who she dated for 12 years until 1992.
Allen later married Mia’s estranged adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, in 1997.
The Rosemary’s Baby actress is the mother of 14 kids, including her biological children, twins Matthew and Sascha, and son Fletcher Previn with ex-husband Andre Previn; she had son Ronan Farrow with Allen.
A November 2013 Vanity Fair profile of the actress and her 14 children described Thaddeus as a car mechanic studying to become a police officer. It also explained how Thaddeus had been left in a railway station as a child in Calcutta, and was forced to crawl to beg for food.
Later, at an orphanage, he was chained to a post, and kids would throw rocks at him to prompt deep growls he made. When Mia saw him, she says, she had a powerful reaction: “That’s my son.”
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Mia, who suffered from polio herself, led a campaign to rid the world of polio.
According to the New York Post, she lost the ability to walk and breathe on her own at age 9, and spent three weeks in a hospital isolation unit.
“I perhaps am more motivated than most people because I had polio myself and it was a real struggle to come through it, and what I saw will never leave me — in the hospitals and in the public wards for contagious diseases,” she told the publication in 2000.
“Perhaps even more so because I have a son who is only 12 years old and who is paralyzed from the waist down because of polio. This is a terrible disease, and he has a lot of difficulty just getting through the day. I would love to see the end of polio, where no more children have this.”
Two of her adopted children, Tam and Lark, are also deceased.
Mia Farrow released a statement on Twitter.
With files from The Associated Press
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