Michael Jackson may have died up to an hour before emergency paramedics even arrived, and his doctor then lied about the star’s condition and the key drug that killed him, a court heard on Friday.
Conrad Murray was also described as looking like a “deer in the headlights” when a paramedic surprised him in Jackson’s bedroom, collecting items shortly after the seemingly-dead star was loaded into an ambulance at his LA mansion.
The doctor in charge of the emergency room at the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles recounted how she was ready to pronounce Jackson dead before he was even brought in, since efforts to resuscitate him had failed.
“When the paramedics arrived, the patient had no signs of life, was clinically dead... And the estimated time down was at least 40 minutes,” said UCLA medic Richelle Cooper.
“I made a determination based on that... To pronounce the patient dead in the field.”
The senior medic’s testimony came at the end of the first week of Murray’s manslaughter trial over the King of Pop’s death on June 25, 2009, from an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol.
Murray could be jailed for up to four years over Jackson’s death at his mansion in the plush Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, where the star was rehearsing for a series of comeback shows in London.
Paramedic Richard Senneff recounted how a “frantic” Murray denied that Jackson had an underlying illness, and made no mention of propofol, or the severe insomnia or other conditions from which Jackson suffered.
Murray told them that Jackson was suffering only from exhaustion and dehydration and had been “down” since shortly before the paramedics arrived at 12.26 pm, five minutes after receiving a 911 call. Senneff said that claim seemed strange given Jackson’s condition, noting the fact that Jackson was hooked up to an intravenous drip, as well as an oxygen-supplying device attached to his nose and a condom catheter to his penis to relieve his bladder without having to get up to go to the bathroom. — AFP