The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports Percocet was found in the music icon’s system.
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The Hollywood Reporter now claims to have confirmed that both the US Attorney’s Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are assisting in the Minnesota police’s investigation. That morning, Prince was scheduled to meet with Andrew Kornfeld, the son of opiod addiction specialist Dr. Howard Kornfeld, according to the Kornfelds’ lawyer, Bill Mauzy.
Mauzy said Andrew Kornfeld was “taken into custody and interviewed and told it was a criminal investigation”. Because Minnesota has a 911 immunity clause for those reporting an emergency, there was a legal issue raised as to whether he could face illegal possession of a controlled substance charges. At the time, he said investigators had no reason to believe the musician’s death was a suicide, and that there were “no signs of obvious trauma”.
Kornfeld said his team works to overcome limitations of traditional treatment approaches by combining “compassion, science, spirit and evidence-based medicine”.
Andrew Kornfeld was expected to meet with Prince early Thursday after taking a red-eye flight from San Francisco the night Prince’s representatives called.
The attorney says Minnesota’s Good Samaritan Law provides immunity for Andrew Kornfeld, who was carrying medication in a bag that was meant to help Prince control pain and begin the process of breaking his alleged opioid addiction.
Meanwhile, federal authorities are now joining an investigation into Prince’s death.
The lawyer said that Andrew Kornfeld had carried with him a small quantity of buprenorphine, a drug used to treat addiction, that was intended for the local doctor to administer to Prince.
Now the Carver County sheriff’s office, which is leading the investigation, is looking to see if prescription drug addiction caused Prince’s death.
Jacqueline Pruitt wipes away a tear after leaving flowers at a memorial to Prince outside the First Avenue nightclub on April 22, 2016 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Mauzy, the son made the 911 phone call to summon help because the staff was so distraught; it is his voice that is heard on the released audio.
A law enforcement source told CNN that a health scare that caused the unscheduled landing of his airplane about a week before his death was likely the result of a reaction to the pain medication, a law enforcement source said. The attorney refused to identify the Minnesota doctor, and it was not clear if that person had a prior relationship with Prince.
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Multiple sources close to the investigation also told us that Prince had entered an out-patient treatment program and that he was seeing a doctor to help him deal with chronic hip pain.
