Sunday’s death of Anna Nicole’s Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, continues to be investigated in the Bahamas, where the young man was found sitting upright in a chair after going to see his mother and his new half-sister in the private Doctors’ Hospital in Nassau.
“The deceased, who had been visiting in the hospital, was supposedly asleep in the chair in the room and didn’t seem to wake up,” Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, told reporters.
“It would appear from our report that the mother had gotten up, saw him in the chair and he appeared to be sound asleep. She tried to wake him up, he was unresponsive and she sounded the alarm. ﾅ Doctors were called to check him and he was subsequently pronounced dead,” Ferguson said.
A post-mortem examination is due to yield a likely explanation for the death, said Ferguson, stating, “We are waiting the report from the pathologist to help us conclude what the cause of death was.”
Asked if drugs or alcohol may have played a role, he said, “I don’t have any information which suggests any of those things. (But) it’s a matter that’s being investigated and we have not closed the door as such on anything.”
He also said, “The preliminary investigation showed there were no visible injuries to the body, no sign of any violence in that room of any nature ﾖ nothing there to suggest what may be the cause of death.”
Smith, who on Thursday gave birth to a 6 lb., 9 oz. girl, has not yet been interviewed about her son’s death, said Ferguson, citing her current physical and psychological fragility, but she will be.
“This is her son who was in her room in the hospital,” said Ferguson. “I would imagine that would be pretty traumatic.”
Ferguson’s account, however, somewhat conflicts with a statement from a spokeswoman for TrimSpa, a diet pill endorsed by the formerly zaftig Playboy Playmate. Rather than placing Daniel in a chair in the hospital, the statement says he “had been found not breathing, in bed” Sunday morning and had “visited Anna and his new half-sister the night before he passed away,” the New York Daily News reports.
The new baby’s father is believed to be Smith’s recent ex-boyfriend, celebrity photographer Larry Birkhead, who claimed paternity last June, the Daily News reports. In October 2005, Smith had told the Louisville Courier Journal, “Larry keeps me occupied so I don’t have to worry about being lonely anymore.”
In a message on his Web site, Birkhead wrote: “I have absolutely no comment on the reports of a childbirth” or “any other events.”
Daniel’s father is Smith’s first husband, Billy Smith, whom she divorced in 1987.
By Stephen M. Silverman, People Magazine
http://people.aol.com
