Foo Fighters’ drummer Taylor Hawkins suffered with chest pains before his death Friday, Colombian authorities revealed in a statement Saturday.
In a Spanish-language press statement on the matter, authorities revealed they received a report about a “patient with chest pains” in a hotel located in northern Bogota, in the town of Chapinero and dispatched an ambulance to the location.
Upon arrival, a health care professional began the resuscitation process. “However, there was no response, and the patient was declared deceased,” Bogota’s Secretary District of Health said. A team from EMI, providing additional home health care via the company, was also at the scene.
A full investigation is underway.
Colombia’s attorney general’s office confirmed in a tweet Saturday that a “team of prosecutors and investigators was assigned to attend to urgent events and support investigations.”
According to AP News, Colombia’s Prosecutor’s Office released a statement saying “toxicological tests on urine from Hawkins’ body preliminarily found 10 psychoactive substances and medicines, including marijuana, opioids, tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines.” However, it did not provide a cause of death and investigations are continuing.
Hawkins does have a history with drugs, though. In 2001, he overdosed on heroin, leaving him in a coma for two weeks. At the time, he thought it would lead to the end of the band, and he has been candid about his journey with drug addiction. “I used to do a lot of f—ing drugs,” he told Kerrang in 2021. “I believed the bulls–t myth of live hard and fast, die young.”
Hawkins — who was on tour in South America with his bandmates — died at age 50 on Friday, ahead of the band’s slated Festival Estéreo Picnic performance in Bogota. “The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins,” the band’s Twitter statement read. “His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever. Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.”
