Death of Smith’s son remains a mystery

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, September 12, 2006

NASSAU, Bahamas – Police investigating the death of Anna Nicole Smith’s 20-year-old son said they had no evidence that he had suffered a heart attack or that drugs were involved.

A hospital official, meanwhile, said medical personnel applied CPR and other measures for 22 minutes to try to save Daniel Smith, who was found unresponsive Sunday in a hospital room where his mother was recuperating from giving birth to a baby girl three days earlier.

“Resuscitative efforts using advanced life-support protocol continued for 22 minutes without response,” Barry Rassin, president and chief executive of Doctors Hospital in Nassau, said at a news conference.

The cause of death remained under investigation Tuesday.

The Nassau Guardian, citing unidentified sources, reported Monday that Daniel Wayne Smith had died of a heart attack. On Tuesday, the newspaper reported that a preliminary investigation found that Smith had antidepressants in his system. It cited sources close to the case.

Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamian Police Force, dismissed the reports. “That’s just talk. We have no evidence at this time to suggest that,” he said when asked whether drugs had contributed to Smith’s death.

Earlier, the commissioner told People magazine that there was no evidence “at this time” that the young man had suffered a heart attack.

Smith died Sunday after he was found unresponsive in a chair while visiting his mother in the hospital.

A funeral home hired by the family said Tuesday it expected to receive Smith’s body after an autopsy is completed.

“Once the hospital has released the remains to our establishment, we are then able to process all of the documents for repatriation to California,” said Loretta Butler-Turner of Butler’s Funeral Homes &Crematoriums.

Police said they were investigating the death as they would any other in the Caribbean country, and they were waiting for a pathologist’s report to determine the cause.

“We have got to give them to time to do their job professionally and properly. I wait for them,” Ferguson said.

It was unclear whether a coroner had completed the autopsy.