Grammy-winning pop legend Whitney Houston died from accidental drowning in her hotel bathtub after taking cocaine which could have triggered a heart attack, coroners said. Houston, who died at age 48 in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel room last month, likely had some kind of heart attack which caused her to slip under the water, said the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office. “You have a heart condition exacerbated by cocaine use which, combined, resulted in her drowning,” spokesman Craig Harvey told AFP, adding: “We feel that there was a heart event, complicated by cocaine use,” before she drowned. She had cocaine in her body when she died, said a coroner’s office statement, which described her death as an “accident,” and the cause as “drowning” and “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” “How injury occurred: found submerged in bathtub filled with water; cocaine intake,” it said, adding: “No trauma or foul play is suspected,” and that a final coroner’s report will be available for release within two weeks. Houston was found dead on February 11, a day before the music industry’s biggest awards show, and hours ahead of a glittering pre-Grammy party in the Beverly Hilton hotel where she died. Houston was buried a week after her death in New Jersey after an emotional farewell ceremony in the Newark baptist church where she sang as a child, which was watched worldwide.
