The Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Attorney’s Office officially joined the investigation into Prince’s death Wednesday, hours after an attorney for a California physician revealed representatives for the singer had sought help for his reliance on painkillers.
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Although autopsy results haven’t been released, Mauzy’s revelations, which were first reported by The Star Tribune, buttress reports that Prince had been fighting – and ultimately lost – a battle with prescription painkillers.
Howard Kornfeld, who treats people with addictions to opioids, says he was supposed to fly to Prince’s home in Minneapolis.
After arriving on the scene at Prince’s Paisley Park estate, he went to approach the singer with two Prince representatives.
A law enforcement source told CNN last week that investigators had found opioid medication with Prince’s body.
The doctor’s son Andrew Kornfeld arrived at Paisley Park the morning of April 21 and was one of three people there when Prince’s body was found in an elevator, the paper said. But Mauzy said Andrew Kornfeld never meant to give the medication to Prince, and instead planned to give it to the Minnesota doctor who was scheduled to see Prince. He is listed as a consultant with his father’s clinic and is a pre-med student, Mauzy said.
The sudden and still officially unexplained death of Prince was shattering enough to his fans, friends and family; now it turns out he might have just missed being treated by an addiction expert.
“He was taken into custody and interviewed and told there was a criminal investigation”, Mauzy said, but added that the son was then allowed to return quickly to San Francisco with no further interrogation.
Mauzy says Kornfeld couldn’t immediately meet Prince, so he sent his son Andrew to discuss treatment.
DEA experts and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have been drafted in to help Carver County Sheriffs determine the cause of the Purple Rain singer’s death.
‘The doctor was planning on a lifesaving mission, ‘ William Mauzy told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The trio finally found Prince, unresponsive, inside an elevator, Mauzy said.
The Kornfelds have apparently hired the Minneapolis-based Mauzy to represent them because there is an ongoing criminal investigation by authorities, however, they have said from the outset that foul play was not suspected.
Metro.co.uk has contacted reps for Prince for comment. In fact, a search warrant was executed at one of Prince’s local pharmacies on April 29. Investigators are especially interested in the circumstances surrounding the emergency landing that Prince’s plane made in IL less than a week before the star died.
After they found Prince, 911 was called, but it was too late. His April 14 concert in Atlanta, which turned out to be his last, had been rescheduled after he said he had the flu.
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Prince was known to maintain secrecy in his life and so much so that very few people knew that he was having problem in hips owing to decades of high-voltage performances, jumping onstage in platform heels.
