911 calls to Prince estate ranged from mundane to serious

MINNEAPOLIS — Authorities and emergency responders were called to Prince’s suburban Minneapolis home over the last five years for everything from mundane reports of tripped fire alarms to more serious medical calls, a log released Tuesday shows.

Data released by Minnesota authorities provide some new details about more than 40 calls for service involving Prince’s Paisley Park complex.

Also Tuesday, authorities released emails to The Associated Press showing that detectives in Minnesota have asked authorities in Moline, Illinois, for fire and ambulance records related to the emergency landing of a plane carrying Prince about a week before his death. It was not clear whether Moline officials had fulfilled the request.

The 911 log released Tuesday includes a June 20, 2011, call in which a woman from Germany claimed Prince had told her a year earlier that he had a cocaine habit that he couldn’t control and that he had advised her to report it. According to the log, it appears authorities didn’t respond, telling dispatchers to call the woman back and tell her that her information was a year old and didn’t specify that Prince was in immediate danger. The woman’s identifying information was blacked out of the log and it wasn’t clear whether she actually knew Prince.

A message seeking comment from Prince’s representative wasn’t immediately returned Tuesday. Several people who have known Prince over the years have said they never saw him use drugs.

Prince was 57 when he died on April 21 at Paisley Park. His cause of death hasn’t been released. A law enforcement official has told the AP that investigators are looking into whether Prince died from an overdose and whether a doctor was prescribing him drugs in the weeks beforehand. The official has been briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

The official also told the AP that investigators were looking into whether Prince overdosed on the plane in Moline.

In an email to the city clerk in Moline, Carver County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Nelson asks for “the information from the Fire/Ambulance records you have for Prince on 4-15-16. We are currently investigating his death and these records may assist us.” Nelson also asked a city detective for the name of the hospital that treated Prince.

The emails were released to AP in response to an open records request. Messages left for the detective weren’t immediately returned.

Some details about prior calls to Prince’s address were released last week. The data released Tuesday provides some new detail about calls that did not generate police reports. They include calls about a woman having an allergic reaction, a fire alarm that was set off by a fog machine, a trespasser walking in the parking lot banging a drum, and a call about a suspicious vehicle in which the responding officer “checked and it was Prince,” the log said.

Other calls include:

• On Oct. 23, 2013, paramedics were called to a report of a 53-year-old man who was apparently dehydrated. That man was taken to a local hospital. The man’s name isn’t listed; Prince would have been 55 years old at the time. When a hospital spokeswoman was asked Tuesday whether Prince was treated on or near that date, she said the hospital can’t provide information on any patients due to privacy laws.
• On Feb. 12, 2014, a woman called saying that since 2009, she had been receiving phone calls from a man who identified himself as Prince. She said the calls started after she listened to a Prince record and heard private information that only she could hear. Police advised her to tell the person who was calling her to stop.
• On Feb. 18, 2016, a female caller asked for a welfare check on Paisley Park, but it wasn’t clear whom she wanted authorities to check on. Authorities said they didn’t have enough information.

There were also claims that Prince has at least one living son. On Jan. 26, 2015, one caller asked that a message be delivered to Prince about a mutual son who was having open heart surgery. Sheriff’s deputies said they wouldn’t relay messages to Prince. On April 21, the day Prince died, one woman called saying she had a 17-year-old son with Prince, and wanted him to attend the funeral.

It’s unclear whether the caller was the same person. Prince has no known surviving children.

The log also includes the call that came in at 9:43 a.m. on the day Prince died. The log says there was “one down not breathing.”