Grammy-winning pop legend Whitney Houston died from accidental drowning in her hotel bathtub after taking cocaine which could have triggered a heart attack, coroners said on Thursday.
Houston, who died at age 48 in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel room last month, likely had some kind of heart attack which caused her to slip under the water, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office said.
“You have a heart condition exacerbated by cocaine use which, combined, resulted in her drowning,” spokesman Craig Harvey said. “We feel that there was a heart event, complicated by cocaine use.”
Ed Winter, deputy chief of coroner investigations, was more explicit when asked by the Los Angeles Times to explain the drowning.
“She may have had a heart attack,” he told the newspaper.
She had cocaine in her body when she died, said a coroner’s office statement, which described her death as an “accident,” and the cause as “drowning” and “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”
“How injury occurred: found submerged in bathtub filled with water; cocaine intake,” it said, adding: “No trauma or foul play is suspected,” and that a final coroner’s report would be available for release within two weeks.
Houston was found dead on Feb. 11, a day before the music industry’s biggest awards show and hours ahead of a glittering pre-Grammy party in the Beverly Hilton hotel where she died.
Speculation had raged since her death that the singer may have succumbed to a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and alcohol.
Indeed, other drugs were found in her system, but did not contribute to her death, the coroner’s office said. They included marijuana, alprazolam (Xanax), cyclobenzaprine (Flexiril) and diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
The TMZ celebrity news Web site quoted a coroner’s office official as saying Houston used cocaine “immediately prior to her collapse,” but investigators who arrived on the scene found no traces of cocaine or any other illegal drug.
That was because “an individual” removed all traces of cocaine from the room before authorities arrived, it said, adding that the person was the same one who supplied the drug to Houston. The coroner’s office spokesman said chronic use of cocaine was likely a key factor in Houston’s death.
“Chances are, had she not had the pre-existing heart disease and cocaine use she may not have drowned,” he said. “The cocaine causes the heart to beat faster, the arteries to constrict, which could ... set you up for a cardiac event.”
Houston’s shock death cast a pall over the annual gathering at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with several tributes to the singer — and a public prayer — added to the show at the last minute.
Houston was buried a week after her death in New Jersey after an emotional farewell ceremony in the Newark baptist church where she sang as a child.
Earlier this month, it emerged that Houston had left all of her assets to her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, born from her troubled marriage to singer Bobby Brown, who gets nothing.
Bobbi Kristina, who is 19, will inherit the proceeds from all of the late singer’s money, furniture, clothing, personal effects, jewelry and cars, according to the will published on March 7.
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