Whitney Houston’s manager and sister-in-law Patricia Houston has described how the singer’s lifeless body was found slumped in the bath tub of her hotel suite.
Patricia - who was staying in the room below Whitney at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 11 - was on her way to see the 48-year-old star when she heard screams coming from the suite.
“I hear screams. I kept walking very slow. A woman opened her door and said, ‘Is everything all right?’ I said ‘Dial 911’,” Contactmusic quoted her as telling Oprah Winfrey in an hour-long special of ‘Oprah’s Next Chapter’ on Sunday night.
“I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what. I was just numb. I walked.
“As I got closer, and I turn the corner, Mary’s [Whitney’s assistant] at the door and she’s screaming, ‘Oh my god’. I told her to stop. ‘Calm down, please’.
“I saw my brother, Ray (security guard), trying to revive her to the point of exhaustion. The paramedics were coming in at that point. I said, ‘Ray, let it go’. He was so out of breath. I felt so badly for him.
“Then I saw her. She had a peaceful look on her face. She had a peaceful look,” she said.
{{/usCountry}}“Then I saw her. She had a peaceful look on her face. She had a peaceful look,” she said.
{{/usCountry}}Breaking down, Patricia told Winfrey how she struggled to leave Whitney once it was all over.
“I just couldn’t do it. I said, ‘Don’t touch me, please’. I couldn’t leave her. I could not leave her. I saw them cover her up and I knew that was it. I knew that that was it. Looking at her and watching that, I still could not believe it. I could not believe it,” she added.
However, with Whitney’s 19-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina down the hall, Patricia said she battled to remain composed.
“I just had to keep my calm. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I had to do it,” she said.