POP SINGER Michael Jackson died following a suspected cardiac arrest in his Bel-Air home yesterday.
The 13-time Grammy award winner was pronounced dead after arriving at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times newspaper. When paramedics arrived he was not breathing, a fire department captain said.
The paper’s report followed news of Jackson’s death first reported on US entertainment website TMZ.
TMZ said on its website “Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back”.
Jackson, 50, became a musical icon performing with The Jackson 5, when he was just six years of age. By the time he was 11, he’d graduated from standing at the back playing the tambourine and bongos to fronting the group’s debut Motown single I Want You Back. It went to number one and Jackson’s haul of blockbuster hits begun.
But it was 1983’s Thriller which was the singer’s tour-de-force. It sold like no other album before it, amassing 60 million sales and seeing seven of the album’s nine tracks released as singles.
The next year, he unveiled his signature “moonwalk” dance move while performing Billie Jean during an NBC special.
In recent years, controversy continued to dominate his life. A 2003 television documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, claimed that Jackson still had sleepovers with young boys and had his third child with a surrogate mother, but Jackson denied these charges.
Concerns about his health had been rampant during his 2005 trial in California on charges of child sex abuse at which he was acquitted and in 2008 when he was photographed in Las Vegas in a wheelchair for reasons that were never explained.
At the time of his death, Jackson was preparing to perform 50 concerts at London’s 02 Arena.The shows, which were due to begin on July 13, sold out within hours of going on sale. AEG Live said Jackson had passed a lengthy physical exam in early 2009, before the London concerts were announced.
Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II. – (Additional reporting Reuters)