What were the final moments of Whitney Houston’s life like? What actually killed her? Those questions and more were answered yesterday with the release of the final autopsy report.
The Los Angeles County coroner ruled that Houston’s surprise death on the eve of the Grammy Awards was an accidental drowning with the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use” as contributing factors.
Toxicology tests measured .58 micrograms of cocaine per milliliter of blood drawn from a vein in her leg during the autopsy. It appears that Houston used cocaine “in the time period just immediately prior to her collapse in the bathtub at the hotel,” Chief Coroner Craig Harvey said.
Investigators found “a small spoon with a white crystal like substance in it and a rolled up piece of white paper” in the bathroom where Houston drowned, coroner’s investigator Kristy McCracken wrote in the autopsy report. Also “remnants of a white powdery substance” were found on a bathroom counter, McCracken added. “I also collected remnants of a white powdery substance from out of a drawer and from the bottom of a mirror in the same drawer in the bathroom counter,” she said.
Along with cocaine, the toxicology tests found other drugs in the singer’s body, including marijuana, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, the muscle relaxant Flexeril and the allergy medicine Benadryl.
Houston was last seen alive by her personal assistant in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel around 3 p.m. on February 11th, the report said. The assistant left to run errands and Houston decided to take a bath in preparation for a pre-Grammy Awards party later that night. When the assistant returned to the locked room at 3:35 p.m.. she found Houston “lying face down in the bathtub filled with water, unresponsive.
“The assistant called for her bodyguard, and together they pulled the decedent out of the bathtub,” the report continued. When paramedics arrived about 10 minutes later they moved Houston to the living room floor of her suite. At 3:55 p.m., 20 minutes after she was found by the assistant, paramedics pronounced Whitney Houston dead.
Authorities believe Houston suffered a seizure from years of cocaine abuse, which was triggered by her final dose prior to getting in the tub. That would explain how she could drown in only 12 inches of water. “Something happened that caused her to go down and we know that when she slipped under the water she was still alive,” the coroner said. “We have evidence of drowning since there was water in the lungs.”
