In newly published audio footage of the dispatch report of the 911 call concerning Nick Gordon‘s death, the Florida dispatcher can be heard describing Gordon, 30, as unresponsive and having “black stuff coming out of his mouth.” After listing the hotel’s address where Gordon was found, the dispatcher said in the TMZ recording, “Patient is 30-year-old male, not conscious, not breathing. Caller advised black stuff coming out of his mouth and he is not breathing.”
The 911 call came in as “cardiac respiratory” on New Year’s Day. As previously reported, Gordon, who was the romantic partner of the late Bobbi Kristina Brown, was rushed to the hospital where he died of an apparent drug overdose.
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The medical examiner will conduct an autopsy this week.
Gordon’s brother told PEOPLE magazine that Gordon died of a drug overdose. Gordon’s attorney Joe Habachy of Atlanta told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that he couldn’t speak to the nature of Gordon’s death but that “it’s been truly heartbreaking to have witnessed first hand the total devastation that drug addiction has wreaked upon a group of young friends, all of whom were loved and had immense potential.”
Habachy also said that despite the challenged Gordon faced in recent years, “he worked hard to hold his head up and stay sober and … he genuinely wanted a happy healthy life with his family more than anything else. My heart goes out to the family and friends Nick leaves behind and to any other families dealing with the losses and heartache caused by drugs.”
Gordon’s death came more than four years after Brown’s in June 2015, when she was 22 and the sole heir to her mother Whitney Houston‘s multimillion-dollar estate. Brown’s death was eerily similar to Houston’s, who was found dead after accidentally drowning in a Beverly Hills hotel room bathtub the night before the Grammy Awards in February 2012. The coroner said her use of cocaine exacerbated her heart disease and played a role in her death.
In January 2015, Brown was rushed to a hospital in Atlanta after being found unresponsive and facedown in a bathtub of a townhome she shared with Gordon. She never regained consciousness and died months later in July while in hospice care. An autopsy found several narcotics and prescription drugs in her body, including marijuana, alcohol and medications used for sedation or to treat anxiety. The underlying cause of death was “immersion associated with drug intoxication.”
Gordon was found civilly liable for Brown’s death after failing to meet several court deadlines in a case against him on behalf of the conservator of Brown’s estate. That suit alleged that Gordon had physically abused Brown, controlled her, and took a significant amount of money from her without permission. The suit alleged that Gordon maneuvered himself into a boyfriend role, then fraudulently represented himself as Brown’s husband to gain access to the estate she’d inherited from Houston.
The suit also alleged that Gordon, who was unofficially adopted by Houston when he was 12 and raised as a brother to Brown, “gave Bobbi Kristina a toxic cocktail rendering her unconscious and then put her face down in a tub of cold water causing her to suffer brain damage.”
Though he was found civilly liable for Brown’s death and ordered to pay more than $36 million in damages in November 2016, no criminal charges were filed against Gordon.
