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Bobbi Kristina’s autopsy shows mixture of drugs, alcohol

Free Press wire reports | 3/11/2016, 11:46 a.m.
Bobbi Kristina Brown’s autopsy report contained evidence of recent cocaine use by the daughter of Bobby Brown and the late ...

ATLANTA

Bobbi Kristina Brown’s autopsy report contained evidence of recent cocaine use by the daughter of Bobby Brown and the late Whitney Houston before she was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her home last year. But a medical examiner’s office said last Friday it could not establish whether her death after months in a coma was accidental or intentional.

Ms. Brown suffered brain damage and died of pneumonia resulting from drug intoxication and her face being immersed in water, the Fulton County Medical Examiner said.

The circumstances under which the aspiring 22-year-old singer entered a bathtub in her home in North Atlanta are unknown, the autopsy report said, leading the medical examiner to classify her manner of death as undetermined.

The findings also do not resolve the question of whether someone gave Ms. Brown a deadly drug cocktail, said University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson.

“We have the cause of death but not the manner of death,” he said. “This doesn’t completely resolve this. There is still some suspense and drama.”

A judge on March 3 ordered Ms. Brown’s autopsy report to be unsealed over the objections of prosecutors, who said it would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation. No one has been charged in her death.

In a civil lawsuit, Ms. Brown’s former boyfriend, Nick Gordon, has been accused of causing her death and stealing from her bank account while she was in a coma.

Mr. Gordon’s spokesman was unavailable for comment. He previously called the lawsuit, filed by the conservator of Ms. Brown’s estate, “slanderous and meritless.”

Ms. Brown was found face down in her bathtub in January 2015 and died in July. She was under the influence of marijuana, alcohol, a cocaine-related substance called benzoylecgonine, morphine and benzodiazepines, which are medications used for sedation or to treat anxiety, according to the medical examiner. It is not known whether the morphine was from heroin, the report said.

The circumstances echoed the 2012 death of Ms. Brown’s famous mother, who drowned in a hotel bathtub in Beverly Hills, Calif. Cocaine abuse and heart disease contributed to Ms. Houston’s death at age 48, authorities said.