Prince’s cousin has opened up the singer’s near-death experience aboard his private jet only days before he died.
“He died on that plane,” Charles Smith says in a new episode of E! True Hollywood Story, airing Sunday. “Then they brought him back.”
Prince was returning to Minneapolis on April 15, 2016 after performing what would end up being his last concert in Atlanta the night before. On the plane with him was assistant Kirk Johnson and musician Judith Hill.
The singer fell unconscious from a suspected opioid overdose, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. After being revived with Narcan, Prince was taken to Trinity Moline Hospital.
Smith says his famous cousin refused to allow blood tests. “Somebody was hiding something,” he claims.
Prince was discharged the following day and flew home to Minneapolis. He died in the early morning hours of April 21 in his Paisley Park home of an accidental overdose of fentanyl. He was 57.
“Prince is back to being Prince again and they take him back home. He should've never left that hospital,” says Smith.
“Just look at how many chances everybody had, that was in that circle, to say something or do something. He didn't have a chance.”
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