Prince's emergency landing audio from less than a week before the music legend's April death was made available for the first time Friday after
ABC News said it sued to get the tapes released.
The emergency landing at the Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois, came just six days before the entertainer was found dead at his Paisley Park complex in suburban Minneapolis on April 21. It happened after Prince became unresponsive on his private plane on the way home from an Atlanta concert.
The Midwest Medical Examiner's Office's reported last month that the 57-year-old, whose full name was Prince Rogers Nelson, died from an accidental, self-administered overdose of the
powerful drug fentanyl, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The newspaper said the death happened the day before he was scheduled to meet with a California doctor in an attempt to shed a reported addiction to opioids.
"The tapes are haunting for what they don't have," ABC News' Josh Margolin reported. "There is no obvious frenzy or fear in the voices. It's just calm and matter-of-fact as the mechanics are worked out so that Prince — whose name was never mentioned — could get the medical treatment he needed."
"What's the nature of the emergency?" the controller at Chicago Center asked on the audio.
The person responding on Prince's private plane replied, "Unresponsive passenger," according to ABC News.
Once at the airport, Prince's identity appeared to remain virtually a secret.
"I just got a call from Chicago Center," stated a call from the airport dispatcher, according to ABC News. "We've got an aircraft inbound. It's going to be medical for an unresponsive passenger. We're requesting an ambulance to meet an officer at Gate 1, West Gate."
Bruce Carter, aviation director at the
Quad City International Airport, told the Quad City Times in April that the singer was unresponsive when his airplane landed, cutting short its trip from Georgia to Minneapolis.
Prince was reportedly treated at Trinity Moline campus of UnityPoint Health Trinity Medical Center. He was released about three hours after his arrival and boarded another flight back to Minneapolis, a hospital representative told the Quad City Times.
TMZ, citing the Moline Fire Department incident report, reported that the singer's body guard carried him off the airplane and paramedics gave him a "save drug" at the airport. A source told TMZ that he was suffering from a Percocet overdose at the time.
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