Photo: Press
Police investigating the death of Prince have revealed that numerous pills were found at his home after a doctor prescribed them under the name of friend in order to protect the singers’ identity and privacy.
Prince died aged 57 at his Paisley Park home on April 21, 2016. According to his autopsy result, the singer died from an accidental overdose of fenatyl, a synthetic opiate 50 times more powerful than morphine.
Associated Press reports via The Guardian that more details have emerged of the circumstances surrounding his death in the form of affidavits and search warrants unsealed in Carver County district court. The authorities are reported to have searched the singer’s home, mobile phone records of his associates as well as his email accounts in an attempt to ascertain where he acquired the fentanyl.
Some of the pills found were found in prescription bottles under the name of Kirk Johnson, a friend and associate of Prince’s. Some of the pills have been established to be counterfeit while at least one of them tested positive for fentanyl.
A picture is emerging of Prince’s suggested addiction to prescription opioids. A week before his death, the singer was taken ill on a flight from Atlanta after a concert and was revived by two doses of a drug that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose.
One of the documents reveals that Prince was visited by Dr Michael Todd Schulenberg on April 7, 2016, and on April 20, 2016. He admits to prescribing oxycodone to Prince on the day of the emergency on the plane “but put the prescription in Kirk Johnson’s name for Prince’s privacy.” Authorities are understood to have to have checked Johnson’s mobile phone records to see whom he was communicating with in the weeks leading up to Prince’s death.
Elsewhere, authorities have searched Prince’s email accounts in effort to determine where he managed to acquire the drugs that killed him. The search warrants don’t detail the results of those searches.
Authorities in Minnesota executed a total of 11 search warrants between April 21 and September 19 last year. The investigation into Prince’s death is ongoing.
