Bobby Brown Jr. died on Nov. 18, 2020, at the age of 28, due to a toxic combination of fentanyl, alcohol, and cocaine, according to an autopsy. He was found dead at his home in California when paramedics responded to a call for a medical emergency.
It was the second loss of a child due to drugs for R&B legend Bobby Brown, who lost his 22-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown in 2015. Three years earlier, her mother, Whitney Houston, was found dead in a hotel bathtub.
Bobbi Kristina died at a hospice, six months after she was found unresponsive in a bath. Cannabis and alcohol were involved in her death, along with medication used for sedation or to treat anxiety. The medical examiner’s office cited the “underlying cause” of death as “immersion associated with drug intoxication,” the BBC reported.
With this latest tragedy, the New Edition star said the drug epidemic has gotten out of control.
“Street fentanyl has taken the lives of so many people unnecessarily and Bobby Jr is another victim,” Brown said in a statement. The Grammy-winning artist kicked his own longtime struggles with alcohol and drugs in 2013.
“This epidemic is out of control and those supplying this lethal drug should be held responsible for the death and destruction that it causes,” he said.
Fentanyl usage increased during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by drug testing company Millennium Health.
Fentanyl positivity urine drug screens increased 78 percent during the first nine months of the pandemic compared with the same period in 2019, according to the report.
Many on Twitter expressed concern for Brown.
“Somebody check on Bobby cause this shit is ridiculous. Ex wife & two kids in less than ten years. This is starting to feel real Kennedy curse adjacent,” one Twitter user posted.
Another tweeted, “Yet again this proves that substance use is a public health concern. There’s overwhelming evidence that substance use is and can be genetic. It’s time for substance use to be universally treated from a harm reduction model and not an abstinence only model. RIP to Bobby Brown Jr”.
Bobby Brown Jr.’s mother, Kim Ward, said that her son wasn’t “into drugs” but was “often easily influenced,” Page Six reported.
“This is a situation where he associated himself with the wrong people,” Ward shared. “My son is gone and those who contributed to his senseless death should be held accountable.”
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Bobby Brown Jr. may have consumed street fentanyl “without his knowledge and we believe it killed him,” according to Ward and Brown’s attorney, Christopher Brown. He had “low, trace amounts of alcohol and cocaine in his system but he had fatal amounts of fentanyl in his heart and blood.”
