New York Police release report on Heath Ledger’s death
Heath Ledger is set to be buried in his home town of Perth, Australia. The actor’s body was transported today from the New York medical examiner’s office, where an autopsy was performed to the Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel. The funeral home will then ship the actor’s body to Australia.
Michelle Lee, a rep for the Australian consulate, says that the consulate has been in contact with his family and has offered assistance to help fly Heath’s body back to Australia. The Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel has been the final stop for many of the world’s most famous names including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, John Lennon, Judy Garland and Luther Vandross.
Heath’s father, Kim Ledger will be attending a memorial service for the star in Los Angeles at the end of the week with Aussie model Gemma Ward. Gemma’s mother, Claire Ward informed Australian media that her daughter is currently in New York.
Gemma Ward’s sister Sophie Ward has discussed with media how Heath had sworn off alcohol at Christmas time.
Details of the discovery of the dead actor are being released by the New York Police Department. When the maid and the massuese realized how grave the situation was when they couldn’t wake the actor, things quickly turned to chaos, confusion and emotion. Police however, have not been critical of the pair who obviously tried everything they believed they could to help him.
Housekeeper Teresa Solomon arrived at the apartment, at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, to do household chores at 12:30pm. According to her, at about 1pm, she went into Ledger’s bedroom to change a light bulb in an adjacent bathroom and found him on the bed face down, with the sheet pulled up to his shoulders, and heard him snoring.
The masseuse, Diana Wolozin arrived at the apartment at 2:45 pm and called his mobile phone at 3:00 pm when he did not come out of the bedroom. At this point Wolozin twice rang the actress Mary-Kate Olsen, a friend of the Australian actor, before calling the emergency number 911.
“Heath is unconscious, I don’t know what to do!” Diane Lee Wolozin screamed into the phone during her first call to Olsen, which she made on Ledger’s cellphone. Her second call to Olsen included this message: “I think he may be dead. I’m calling 911!”
At this time, Olsen told her she was sending members of her private security team to Ledger’s $20,000-a-month SoHo apartment, but Olsen never advised her to call 911.
Wolozin called 911 at 3:26pm (15 minutes after first discovering his body) and reported that Ledger was not breathing. The 911 operator urged Wolozin to try to revive Ledger, but she was unsuccessful. Emergency medical workers arrived at 3.33pm, at the same time a private security guard called by Olsen also arrived at the scene.
The medical workers moved Ledger’s body to the floor and then used a defibrillator and CPR, but to no avail as Ledger was pronounced dead at 3:36pm.
New York police said no illegal drugs were found in the apartment and that there were no obvious signs of suicide. However, six different types of prescription drugs were found in the apartment including the anti-anxiety medications Xanax, Valium, and Ativan, the sleeping medication Lunesta and the sedative Restoril, used by people with “debilitating insomnia.”
Some reports suggest that Ledger may also have been taking the sleeping pill Ambien, marketed in Australia as Stilnox which is known to having rare but troubling side-effects. It is unknown what quantity or types of medication the actor had ingested but he may have died from an accidental overdose. Ric Day, a professor of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales, said all the drugs found act on the brain in a similar way, by depressing the central nervous system.
Prof. Day says:
“If you took a combination of these it’s like taking a massive dose of one…..If you took a lot you’d be sleeping very, very soundly…. If your airways then became blocked because you inhaled a bit of vomit or were sleeping in an awkward position, you couldn’t do much about it.”
New York’s chief medical examiner says it will take up to 10 days to accurately detect what drugs, if any, were in Ledger’s body at the time of his death. Police confirmed a rolled up $20 bill was found near the actor’s body, but said there was no evidence of drug residue to indicate it was used to snort cocaine. (Hard to believe since I recall that most American notes have some traces of residue of that drug on them.)
NYPD detective Kevin Czartoryski said:
“They’ve [police detectives have] gone through the apartment…. They’ve secured the apartment. Now it’s a wait and see when the results come back on the toxicology…. No illegal drugs have been found, no foul play and no obvious signs of suicide.”
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