LOS ANGELES (AFP) ― As fans await autopsy results that may not come for weeks, speculation raged Monday that pop legend Whitney Houston may have died from a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and alcohol.
Houston, who possessed one of the greatest-ever singing voices and sold more than 170 million records, fought a long and public battle with substance abuse after her career and personal life went off the rails.
She was found dead on Saturday afternoon, at the age of just 48, in her bathtub in a luxury suite of the Beverly Hilton hotel as preparations were under way for the Grammy Awards, the highlight of the music industry calendar.
An autopsy on her body was completed on Sunday but the toxicology probe is said to be ongoing and a “security hold” has been placed on its results, which officials say may not be published for six to eight weeks.
Houston’s body was released Monday by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, CNN said. Family sources told the network that the body was to be flown to her native New Jersey for a funeral expected on either Friday or Saturday.
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A T-shirt, flowers and notes are left at a makeshift memorial for Whitney Houston outside the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday. (AP-Yonhap News) |
Ed Winter, the assistant chief coroner for L.A. County, earlier refused to speculate on any initial indications found in the star’s blood or urine.
Asked several times if coroners knew the cause of death but were just withholding it from the public, Winter said there might be “a suspicion” of the cause but that everyone must wait for official results to be released.
“You can look at a body and not know what the cause of death is. You might have a suspicion. But the person could have suffered a heart attack or an embolism or something,” he explained.
Celebrity website TMZ said it had learnt from unnamed “family sources” that the singer died from a lethal combination of prescription drugs and alcohol.
The website, citing law enforcement sources, and NBC said several bottles of pills were found in the hotel room where Houston died, among them the prescription anti-depressant Xanax and other pain medication.
CBS News cited law enforcement sources as speculating the most likely cause of death was a heart attack or prescription drug overdose.
TMZ said their source had revealed there was not enough water in the singer’s lungs to show drowning as the cause of death ― as had first been rumored ― and that she had died before being submerged in the water.
The L.A. police department said in a statement Monday that Houston was “underwater and apparently unconscious” when found in the tub by members of her staff. Emergency personnel were unable to revive her.
A friend who saw Houston on Thursday, two days before her death, told CNN that the superstar seemed “upbeat and joyful” and not apparently under the influence of drugs.
But the Los Angeles Times reported that Houston had behaved erratically during an appearance that day at a rehearsal for a Grammy Awards party.
