Court records released on Monday state that a physician who had been treating Prince for opioid addiction arrived at Paisley Park to handle test results on the morning the star was found dead in an elevator at the compound in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Before the court documents were sealed, the Los Angeles Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune obtained a search warrant in which Michael Todd Schulenberg, who said he was a doctor at the North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, told investigators that he had treated the musician on April 7 and on April 20 and had prescribed medication for him.
A law enforcement source told CNN that agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) alongside Carver County deputies on Tuesday were at the Paisley Park compound, where agents were conducting a search warrant.
Filed on May 6, the warrant allowed authorities to search for and seize the musician’s medical records at North Memorial Medical Center. Schulenberg no longer works for the center, as Lesa Bader, a spokeswoman for the North Memorial Health Care system, told the Los Angeles Times. She declined to provide more details because of privacy policies.
The warrant does not mention the kind of tests whose results Schulenberg was set to deliver on April 21, the day of Prince’s death, according to the Star Tribune. An unnamed source told the newspaper last week that the meds the doctor had prescribed Prince were aimed at treating him for withdrawal symptoms from opioid addiction. The person noted that Schulenberg had not prescribed opioids.
A lifesaving mission that could not be completed
Prince was scheduled to meet with a Northern California specialist in treating opioid addiction the week of his death. A report released May 4 by the Star Tribune states that representatives for the musician called a doctor and medical director at Recovery Without Walls, Howard Kornfeld, who could not arrive in Minnesota to meet with Prince until the day after the star’s death.
The doctor sent Andrew Kornfeld, his son and associate, so he could start the medical treatment that the clinic had to offer the musician. Carrying a medication used to treat opioid addiction named buprenorphine, Andrew made it to Paisley Park on April 21. The lawyer representing the Kornfelds, William Mauzy, told the newspaper that the doctors wanted to conduct a quick evaluation of Prince’s death to start a treatment plan as soon as possible.
“The doctor was planning on a lifesaving mission,” Mauzy said.
The mission could not be completed because Prince was eventually found dead in the elevator. The lawyer said Andrew Kornfeld was the person who called 911.
Although Prince’s autopsy was completed April 22, the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office said a toxicology scan could take weeks and the coroner’s office told reporters that it would not release details until “all results are obtained.”
Londell McMillan, the star’s longtime lawyer, told the Associated Press that Prince had not been taking any drugs that could pose a serious threat to his health.
“Everybody who knows Prince knows he wasn’t walking around drugged up. That’s foolish,” McMillan told AP. “No one ever saw Prince and said, ‘He looks high.’ It wasn’t what he was about”, the lawyer added.
Source: Washington Post