Lilo's parents died in a car accident sometime before the events of Lilo & Stitch. It is suggested that rain created treacherous road conditions leading to the crash

. Lilo, being a young child at the time, believes that her failure to feed Pudge, a fish she thinks controls the weather, caused the storm that night, and she carries a deep sense of guilt over their deaths

. This belief is a coping mechanism for her grief, as she tries to make sense of the tragedy in a way a child might

. The parents have not appeared in the series except in a few photographs, showing them as loving and kind, with Lilo's father having coined the phrase "ʻOhana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten"

. Their deaths left Lilo and her older sister Nani to rely on each other, with Nani becoming Lilo's legal guardian