AN ARTIST’S teenage son died of an overdose on heroin and prescription drugs after a “missed opportunity” to stop him getting medication from multiple different places.
Alison Lapper’s 19-year-old son Parys died in August 2019 after years struggling with addiction and his mental health.
The artist, who was born without arms and with shortened legs due to a condition called phocomelia, had posed naked while heavily pregnant with Parys in 2000 for a marble sculpture by the artist Marc Quinn, for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in London.
Parys was found on August 13, 2019 at the Wolsey Hotel in Worthing, and a post mortem examination revealed he had taken heroin and benzodiazepine drugs.