‘The Internet Helped Kill My Child,’ Says Drena De Niro After Son’s Tragic Overdose

29 November 2025

Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, Drena De Niro and Robert De Niro. Credit : Drena De Niro/Instagram

In a deeply painful and stark reflection, Drena De Niro, daughter of legendary actor Robert De Niro recently opened up about the heartbreaking loss of her 19-year-old son Leandro De Niro Rodriguez. In a new interview, she laid bare her belief that his tragic overdose was not only due to dangerous drugs but also influenced by the pervasive reach of the internet and social media.

Leandro was found dead on July 2, 2023 in a Manhattan apartment. The official cause of death was ruled as an accidental overdose, a fatal cocktail of fentanyl, benzodiazepines, ketamine and cocaine, according to toxicology reports. His mother believes that while he had experimented with marijuana and casual partying earlier, something changed dramatically. “There was a change in him that was so fast,” she said, recalling how Leandro warned her in his final days that he felt overwhelmed and considered seeking rehab again.

In the recent interview, Drena cited the influence of social media including platforms like TikTok as a toxic amplifier that may have contributed to Leandro’s downward spiral. She did not specify which content or interactions triggered the shift, but stressed that the internet exposed him to pressures, temptations and destructive behaviors far beyond what she had known.

Her grief is raw and visceral. She described the morning she learned of his death: waking up with a terrible feeling of dread, only to have a detective at her door deliver the life-shattering news. “The whole world as I knew it collapsed,” she recalled. For a woman who had long felt defined by being someone’s daughter, her son represented a hard-won identity as a mother. Losing him felt like losing a part of herself and the future they had envisioned.

In the months following Leandro’s death, authorities arrested several individuals including a woman previously dubbed the “Percocet Princess” on charges tied to distributing counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that were linked to his overdose and several other teen deaths. While these arrests brought a measure of accountability, Drena admitted that it did little to heal the pain. “I don’t feel any happier,” she told Page Six.

Rather than revenge, she seeks awareness and compassion. In the wake of the tragedy, she and Robert De Niro founded the Leandro De Niro Rodriguez Foundation, with a mission to support families impacted by the fentanyl crisis and to shine a light on the hidden corners of social media where vulnerable youth might be lured into danger.

She has since spoken out forcefully against the stigma and blaming often faced by those who lose loved ones to overdose. She rejects the narrative that her son’s death was just the result of a personal failing. Instead, she points to systemic failures, a toxic mix of substance availability, online influence, mental health neglect and societal indifference.

In public statements and social media posts, Drena has tried to ensure that Leandro’s legacy is not reduced to a tragic footnote or a viral headline. She wants the world to remember the “pure soul” he was sensitive, creative, with dreams that went unrealized. His death, she says, should wake parents, communities and regulators to hard truths about how easily innocence can be corrupted in the age of fast clicks and easy-access drugs.

Her grief remains unhealed, but her purpose has taken shape. Through the foundation and her public voice, she advocates for more stringent controls on counterfeit pills, wider mental-health support, and greater caution around content that targets young, impressionable minds. She hopes that by telling her son’s story in full, complicated truth she might spare another family from the same heartbreak.

This is a story not just about loss, but of awakening. It challenges assumptions that drug addiction is a simple personal failure. It forces a reckoning with how online culture, easy distribution of deadly substances, and social isolation can collide to devastating effect. For Drena De Niro, this painful reckoning is now her mission.