Whitney Houston’s Untimely End On The Eve Of Her Comeback
Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesJust one day before her death, Whitney Houston saved her daughter from drowning in the bathtub.
To be nicknamed “The Voice,” you’d have to have massive vocal chops. And if the song “I Will Always Love You” is anything to go by, Whitney Houston more than earned that title.
But massive talent comes with a price. When Houston signed her first record deal at only 21 years old, she entered a music industry that was dominated by rampant cocaine use. Her marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 1992 only contributed to her use of the drug.
In the end, Whitney Houston died after being unable to break her cocaine addiction on Feb. 11, 2012. It was the night before the 54th Grammy Awards — where Houston was to perform.
That night, her producer Clive Davis hosted a party at the Beverly Hilton, as was his personal tradition. Houston checked into the Beverly Hilton that day, but unfortunately, she never checked out. Houston’s longtime assistant, Mary Jones, found the 48-year-old singer facedown and unresponsive in roughly a foot of water in the hotel room’s bathtub and called 911.
After 20 minutes of CPR, the Beverly Hills Fire Department pronounced Whitney Houston dead at 4 p.m.
They found drug paraphernalia littered across the hotel room, and the coroner ultimately concluded that she had been “acutely intoxicated from cocaine,” which contributed to her death.
Multiple bottles of prescription medication were also found in Houston’s hotel room, including Xanax, Benadryl, and the muscle relaxant Flexeril. The medications were prescribed by five different doctors. Houston also had traces of marijuana in her system, and the room had within it an open bottle of champagne, two beers, and loose tablets.
In his report, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht described the events he believed led to Houston’s death.
“I think that this lady fell into the water, she was unconscious, dead, or dying when she fell into the tub,” he said. “I do not believe that the death was due to drowning, although I cannot rule out that she could’ve been in the agonal moments and with her head submerged in water that certainly could have contributed to her death.”
Eerily, the day before her own death, Houston found her 18-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, asleep in the bathtub and saved her from drowning.
But only three years later, in 2015, Bobbi was once again found unconscious in her bathtub. After spending six months in a coma, she tragically died of pneumonia and was buried next to her mother.
