Bobby Brown attends "The BET Honors" 2015. Credit: Kris Connor/BET/Getty Images for BET
Bobby Brown released a statement to Us Weekly on Friday, March 4, hours after Bobbi Kristina Brown's cause of death — drugs and drowning — was revealed by the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office on what would have been her 23rd birthday.
"First and foremost, 23 years ago today, Bobbi Kristina was born," Brown tells Us Weekly in his statement. "Krissy will always live in my heart and soul. I love my baby girl. For news affiliates to seek and obtain my daughter’s autopsy report, before anyone has been brought to justice for her death is mind blowing to me. Please pray for my family."
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The singer's lawyer Christopher Brown also added a statement of his own. "Yesterday we were informed that two news affiliates were granted access to the autopsy of Bobbi Kristina Brown. While this action is unsettling, we will continue in our efforts in the civil lawsuit and the criminal investigation," Brown's attorney tells Us. "Bobby Brown has had to be strong and mourn his loved ones in a fashion that is foreign to most people. So public, so raw, with apparently no end in sight. Hopefully public indictments and prosecution will lead to private healing and closure for Bobby Brown and his family."
An Atlanta-area judge issued an order on Thursday, March 3, to unseal Bobbi Kristina's cause of death. The following morning, the Fulton County Medical Examiner revealed that she died at age 22 from "Lobar pneumonia," which was the result of "immersion of face in water complicating mixed drug intoxication."
Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston and their daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 2002. Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
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The medical examiner's office listed the drugs that were found in Bobbi Kristina's system at the time of her drowning in January 2015. They included marijuana, alcohol, benzoylecgonine (a cocaine-related substance), benzodiazepines (medications used for sedation or to treat anxiety) and morphine. "It could not be determined from toxicology tests whether the morphine resulted from heroin use," the statement read.
Bobbi Kristina died on July 26, 2015, and was buried beside her late mother, Whitney Houston. (In eerily similar circumstances, the Grammy winner herself died in Feburary 2012 after being found unconscious in a bathtub.) Her autopsy results were sealed in September.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Nick Gordon, was slapped with a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit in August, which was filed by Bobbi Kristina's conservator, Bedelia Hargrove. In the court documents, Hargrove claimed that “Ms. Brown died due to a violent altercation with Gordon after which he placed her in a bathtub, unconscious, after he injected her with a toxic mixture.”
Gordon's lawyer Jose Baez released a counter-statement in August. “The recent lawsuit against Nick is slanderous and meritless,” Gordon's legal team told USA Today.
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