911 transcripts: Emergency at Paisley Park
How did Prince die? We may not know the answer any time soon.
The enigmatic music legend died Thursday at his studio compound in Chanhassen. His body was taken to the Midwest Regional Medical Examiner's office in Ramsey, a few miles from Anoka, where an autopsy is expected to be performed Friday.
There was something very different about this particular emergency from the start. The initial broadcast by a 911 dispatcher in Carver County had ominous details.
"Two one car for a medical, Paisley Park, 7801 Audubon Road, 7801 Audubon Road, for a male down not breathing."
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Paisley Park. It's one of the few destinations in Minnesota that many people around the world might recognize.
A sheriff's transcript of the 911 call to summon help says an unidentified man on the line made the connection outright: "We're at Prince's house," he told the operator.
That was at 9:43 a.m.
By 9:49 a.m., paramedics had arrived and started CPR.
A statement by the Carver County Sheriff's Office said that Prince had been found unconscious and unresponsive in an elevator in his suburban Chanhassen headquarters, a sprawling residence, performance space and recording studio.
One of the two people on the 911 call said he was already dead when the call was made.
"Yes, it's Prince," the caller said.
Emergency medical personnel worked on him for 18 minutes, then pronounced him dead just after 10 a.m.
Prince was 57.
Authorities won't say when they will release details of how the music icon died, although toxicology exams can sometimes take days or even weeks to complete.
There had been days of speculation about his health. Prince played two shows at the Fox Theater in Atlanta last Thursday after canceling two others earlier in the month. His representatives had cited the flu, the show business magazine Variety reported. On Friday, his plane made an unscheduled stop in Illinois on the way home to Minnesota, after Prince reportedly fell ill mid-flight.
At the time neither Prince nor his representatives discussed the reason for the stop but he did schedule what was billed as a dance party at Paisley Park last Saturday, and made a brief appearance there himself.
Debra Grant of Minnetonka was one of several hundred people at the dance party. She counts herself as a lifelong fan — she even remembers serving him drinks at a downtown Minneapolis bar where she worked decades ago.
Grant was one of thousands of people that made a pilgrimage to Paisley Park on Thursday, and she said she wondered about that last appearance before his fans.
"He was maybe on stage on stage for maybe 10 minutes," she said. "He looked marvelous, because he had on an awesome outfit on, of course. But you could tell his voice was really weak when he did talk. He just sounded weak."
Others, though, said they saw no indication that anything was amiss. Some even reported Prince had admonished them about speculation about his health in the media, telling them to "wait a few days before you waste any prayers."