The Los Angeles County Coroner has begun an autopsy on the body of pop star Michael Jackson following his death from an apparent heart attack.
Tributes have been pouring in for the 13-time Grammy award winner who was pronounced dead at 10.26 pm Irish time last night after arriving at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in full cardiac arrest.
A spokesman for the hospital said: “When he arrived at hospital at approximately 1.14pm a team of doctors, including emergency physicians and cardiologists, attempted to resuscitate him for a period of more than one hour. They were unsuccessful.” TV footage showed a rescue helicopter flying the star’s body to a waiting ambulance.
His brother Jermaine told reporters: “My brother, the legendary King of Pop, passed away on Thursday June 25th at 2.26pm," he said.
“We believe he suffered a cardiac arrest at his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until the results of the autopsy are known. The personal physician who was with him at the time attempted to resuscitated him.”
Speculation has already begun as to what killed the 50-year-old "King of Pop" just weeks before a long-awaited series of comeback concerts.
In an interview Lieutenant Brian Elias of the coroner’s office said a conclusive autopsy can take one to two weeks or up to six to eight weeks.
“We look at anything from the circumstances at the scene of death to medical history, medications and such.”
Those tests will determine if Jackson had any drugs, alcohol or prescription medications in his system.
Earlier, a family attorney said he had been concerned that Jackson's use of prescription drugs for dancing-related injuries would eventually prove fatal and that the entertainer's inner circle had ignored his warnings.
Lawyer Brian Oxman, a spokesman for the Jackson family, told CBS's The Early Showtoday that he had been concerned about the prescription drugs that Jackson took due to injuries suffered while performing.
"I had warned everyone that I could warn and I told them that one day, Michael Jackson is going to wake up dead, which is a very odd way of putting it ...," Mr Oxman said.
"I do not want to point fingers at anyone because I want to hear what the toxicology report says and the coroner says but the plain fact of the matter is that Michael Jackson had prescription drugs at his disposal at all times.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles Police are seeking to locate the physician who tried to resuscitate Jackson yesterday at his Bel-Air home.
The singer wasn’t breathing when paramedics arrived, began treatment and took him to the UCLA Medical Center. The coroner investigates where there is no death certificate signed by a doctor, said Amanda Betat, a police spokeswoman.
”We have impounded his car to find more clues as it may contain medications or other evidence to assist the coroner in determining the cause of and circumstances surrounding Mr Jackson’s death” said Ms Betat, who didn’t disclose the doctor’s name.
“It may also assist us later on when we’ll interview his physician.”
TMZ.com reported that the doctor lived at the home but the spokeswoman said she could not confirm that and did not know the doctor's identity.
She stressed that the doctor was not under criminal investigation but coroner's investigators wanted to contact him.
Detectives from the LAPD’s Robbery Homicide division also searched Jackson's home in the upscale Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles at the behest of Chief William Bratton.
But they called the investigation an "everyday" event.
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 Thrillerwhich 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 Jeanduring 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 13th, 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.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him," said Quincy Jones, who collaborated with Jackson on three of his best-selling albums, Off the Wall, Thrillerand Bad.
Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II.
Additional reporting Agencies