Further agony for Liam Neeson as nephew dies
Another family tragedy for the Taken star
LIAM Neeson was last night mourning his nephew, who died from severe head injuries he suffered five years ago, when he fell from the top of a phone box.
Ronan Sexton, 35, died at home with his family at his bedside having never recovered from the accident.
The keen musician had been out with friends when he climbed on to the phone box, on the Brighton seafront in England, as a dare at 4am on June 22, 2014. But he fell more than 20 feet into concrete.
His death is the latest tragedy to affect the family after the star of the Taken film series lost his wife Natasha Richardson, following a skiing accident in March 2009.
The 45-year-old actress died in hospital in New York two days after hitting her head in a fall at a ski resort in Canada. She had waved away paramedics who offered to help her and walked back to her hotel. But she later felt sick and was taken to hospital in Montreal and then to New York.
She died from a build-up of blood between the brain and the skull putting pressure on the brain tissue, known as an epidural haematoma, caused by the impact to her head.
Mr Sexton, of Cushendall, Co. Antrim, was the youngest of six children of Neeson’s sister Bernadette, who lost her partner Harry two years ago. In recent years 66-year-old Neeson has regularly visited his family here, and he was understood to have been very close to his late nephew.
At the time of Mr Sexton’s accident his family issued a statement thanking hospital staff, and also the public for their outpouring of ‘love, support, prayers and good wishes for Ronan’.
Neeson – who also starred in Schindler’s List, Michael Collins and Love Actually – married Richardson, daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, in 1994.
They had two children together, sons now aged 23 and 22. In an interview two years ago Neeson told how he had concentrated on work to cope with the loss of his wife.
He said: ‘I’m not good without work. I just don’t wallow too much. And I just didn’t want to, especially for my boys, seem to be wallowing in sadness.’