Taylor Hawkins (Yui Mok/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)Forensic investigators have paved the way for the repatriation of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins’ body following his shock death on Friday.
The Institute of Forensic Medicine in the Colombian capital Bogota has released his body following a weekend autopsy.
A private funeral director is now thought to be preparing to send Taylor back home for burial.
Heartbroken Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl is already back in Los Angeles.
The 53-year-old, who returned on Saturday on a private plane with his bandmates, was pictured hugging friends and a man thought to be his manager as he arrived home after the tragic loss.
Forensic experts are still understood to be awaiting the results of further tests on tissue samples taken from dad-of-three Taylor’s body.
But local reports said it had been handed over to his loved ones so his funeral can take place.
A respected Bogota-based news magazine reported yesterday his heart was twice as heavy as it should have been and said investigators had concluded the 50-year-old suffered cardiovascular collapse after binging on a cocktail of drugs.
The federal government department did not mention cocaine in its post-autopsy statement, although earlier unconfirmed reports pointed to a “white cocaine-like powder” being found in Hawkins’ room at the Four Seasons Hotel Casa Medina. The alarm was raised on Friday night when the drummer complained of chest pains ahead of the Foo Fighters headline performance at the Estereo Picnic Festival in Bogota.
Efforts to revive him by a private doctor and city emergency responders failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Dad-of-three Hawkins suffered a heroin overdose in London in 2001 that left him in a coma for around a week.
In an interview last year he admitted: “Everyone has their own path and I took it too far. “I was partying in London one night, and I mistakenly did something and it changed everything.
“I believed the bull***t myth of live hard and fast, die young.
“I’m not here to preach about not doing drugs, because I loved doing drugs, but I just got out of control for a while and it almost got me.”
The normal weight of a human heart in adult men is around 300 to 350 grams. Hawkins’ heart was said to have been “at least” 600 grams.
A heavier-than-normal heart weight may be associated with cardiac diseases including cardiomyopathy which makes it harder for the organ to pump blood to the rest of the body and can lead to heart failure.
Drug use can cause damage to the heart and the use of toxic substances is a main risk factor for sudden cardiac death.
In its statement released late on Saturday, Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office said: “Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins was found dead in a hotel room on Friday in Bogota.
“After concluding an initial forensic examination of the body the Attorney General’s Office would like to communicate the following: 1) Preliminary results of the urine toxicology test indicate the presence of 10 different substances: THX (Marihuana), tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and opioids among others. 2) The National Institute of Forensic Medicine continues to conduct the necessary medical studies to ascertain the cause of death. 3) The Attorney General’s office will continue to investigate and will duly inform the findings of forensic examinations in due time.”
