Rory Sykes, a former child star who was born blind and had cerebral palsy, died Wednesday as Los Angeles wildfires approached his home but he refused to leave, his mother said.
“I’m totally heart broken.”
As a child, 32-year-old Rory Callum Sykes, starred in the late-’90s British TV show “Kiddy Kapers,” and later worked as a professional motivational speaker.
He was living in a self-contained cottage on his family’s 17-acre Malibu estate, which burned down Wednesday as the Palisades Fire spread westward.
Shelley Sykes said she decided to wait in the estate’s main property to keep an eye out during the night on her son’s cottage.
At around 6 a.m. in the morning, she saw embers on the roof of her son’s place and grabbed a hose to spray the roof, but it appeared the water had been cut off.
She said she drove off to the fire station to get help to rescue her son. By the time firefighters arrived, it was too late—the three cottages were burned down to the ground, Shelley Sykes said.
“I couldn’t put out the cinders on his roof with a hose because the water was switched off by @LVMWD Las Virgenes Municipal Water,” she wrote on X. “Even the 50 brave fire fighters had no water all day!” she posted.
Las Virgenes Municipal did not immediately respond to an inquiry from NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media, regarding the water service.
Rory Sykes was born in Britain and raised in Australia. His handicaps were the result of a car crash while in the womb.
His website describes him as “a well-traveled gamer turned investor and entrepreneurial philanthropist,” and “a professional speaker who loves to play RuneScape and dabble in code.”
In recent years, he has been an online gamer, investor, and public speaker.
Rory Skyes also co-founded the Happy Charity alongside his mother in 2005, fundraising for sick children globally.
