The Day Prince Died

If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is available 24/7 via the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

On the morning of April 21, 2016, a 911 call came in from Prince‘s Paisley Park home just outside Minneapolis.

The caller, a man named Andrew Kornfeld, said that an individual there at the compound was unconscious and needed medical help. Despite swift action from paramedics, including CPR attempts, it was too late. Prince, not even 60 years old, was dead.

“It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer Prince Rogers Nelson has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57,” his publicist Yvette Noel-Schure said in a statement then. “There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time.”

Naturally, the world both mourned the loss of one of rock’s most celebrated artists and wondered aloud how a person so seemingly full of life could suddenly be gone.

Prince’s Life in the Weeks Prior to His Death

In the decade since Prince’s passing, much has been learned about his life and health in the period of time leading up to that tragic moment. Though his career appeared to be business as usual, beneath the surface was someone struggling with addiction.

On April 7, 2016, Prince postponed two of his Piano & a Microphone Tour shows, scheduled for the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. At the time, it was announced by the venue that it was due to the singer having the flu. Ten days later, Prince made up for it with a rescheduled show.

But then, as he was traveling back to Minnesota, Prince’s private plane made an emergency landing at Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois — less than an hour from its final destination — where he was taken immediately to a hospital. Shortly after that, reps for Prince assured the media “all’s good” and that it was simply a matter of “bad dehydration.”

It was not until later that the public learned Prince had actually been entirely unresponsive on the plane, and that at the hospital he’d been given a shot of the opioid antidote Narcan. Against medical advice, he’d left the hospital after only a few hours to finish the journey home. In the days after that, Prince was seen in public several times, including at a local jazz concert, appearing normal.

Prince’s Last Efforts to Save Himself

What the world would also learn in the weeks, months and even years after Prince’s death, was that he was actively seeking assistance for his struggles — an ironic turn of events given that he was famously anti-alcohol, a staunch vegan and often banned drugs and other substances from his tours and studio sessions.

Prince’s primary battle was with prescription pain medication, to the point where he and his friends sought the help of Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a specialist in that type of addiction with his own treatment facility in Mill Valley, California. A plan was made for Dr. Kornfeld’s son, Andrew, to fly to Minneapolis with the intention of meeting with Prince and discussing a treatment plan, as well as future long term care under Dr. Kornfeld’s supervision. “The doctor was planning on a lifesaving mission,” William Mauzy, an attorney for the Kornfelds told The Minnesota Star Tribune.

That discussion never happened.

When Andrew Kornfeld arrived at Paisley Park, armed with a opioid use disorder medication called buprenorphine, he and a handful of the compound’s staff found Prince, collapsed in an elevator. To Kornfeld, it was apparent that there would be no saving him.

“The person is dead here,” he said, according to a transcript of the 911 call (via The New York Times). “And the people are just distraught.” When asked for the emergency’s address, Kornfeld, unfamiliar with the area, could only answer: “We’re at Prince’s house.”

Prince was pronounced dead at 10:07 A.M., less than 20 minutes after the arrival of paramedics. Neither foul play nor suicide were suspected.

A Police Investigation and Subsequent Charges

A number of things happened in the weeks after the incident.

An autopsy was conducted to determine a cause of death: accidental overdose of fentanyl, an extremely dangerous synthetic opioid, 100 times more powerful than morphine and 50 times as potent as heroin. While it can be used in professional settings as an anesthetic and pain reducer, illegal manufacturing of fentanyl started seeping into street drugs in America as early as the ’90s. By the end of 2016, the year Prince died, just over 18,000 Americans died of an overdose from the drug — approximately 3,000 more than heroin. (This nation-wide problem would only continue to escalate. In 2023, 105,007 people died.)

When Paisley Park was searched by police, they found numerous bottles of pills scattered across the entire home, many of them with mixed types of medication inside them. According to Carver County Attorney Mark Metz, it appeared Prince believed he was taking a Vicodin dose to manage pain, but instead consumed pills laced with fentanyl.

“Prince had no idea he was taking a counterfeit pill that could kill him,” Metz said to reporters at the time.

As the investigation proceeded, law enforcement learned that in the days leading up to April 21, Prince visited his doctor, Michael Schulenberg, twice — once on April 7 and again on April 20. In both instances, Dr. Schulenberg prescribed opioid withdrawal medication to Prince. In a April 7 text message to Prince’s bodyguard Kirk Johnson, Dr. Schulenberg said that the singer “just doesn’t look really well.” Later on, video surveillance from the day before Prince died was found of him and a friend walking in and out of Schulenberg’s office.

In 2018, Schulenberg was accused of writing illegal prescriptions and agreed to pay $30,000 to settle federal civil charges brought against him. Though the settlement did not specifically name Prince, it referenced a prescription written on April 14, 2016 under someone else’s name — a violation of the Controlled Substances Act. According to search warrants, Schulenberg had admitted to authorities that he prescribed painkillers to Prince on April 14, but put it under Johnson’s name “for Prince’s privacy.”

“Doctors are trusted medical professionals and, in the midst of our opioid crisis, they must be part of the solution,” U.S. Attorney Greg Brooker said in a statement then. “As licensed professionals, doctors are held to a high level of accountability in their prescribing practices, especially when it comes to highly addictive painkillers. … We are committed to using every available tool to stem the tide of opioid abuse.”

In 2020, Schulenberg was fined $4,648 by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for unethical conduct and mismanaging medical records. He has never been criminally charged.

Further Fentanyl Deaths in the Music Community

Prince, unfortunately, was not the last artist to become a victim of the fentanyl crisis. In October of 2017, Tom Petty, 67, died of an accidental overdose from a mixture of drugs, including fentanyl. A similar situation happened with 26-year-old rapper Mac Miller in 2018. And while the number of annual deaths from the drug have declined over recent years, fentanyl is still (as of September 2025) the leading cause of drug overdose death in the United States.

Dr. Howard Kornfeld continues to work in the addiction recovery space, directing the organization, Recovery Without Walls.

Even just a few months after Prince’s death, his family was cognizant of the fact that what happened to their loved one could happen to anyone, rockstar or not. Prince’s cousin, Charles Chazz Smith, emphasized this in an August 2016 interview with KARE 11.

“Being free enough to be able to say, I’m not doing well today. I’m in pain. Can you guys help me? Are you going to make fun of me if I tell you that I am in need, I’m hurting?” he said. “That’s really a big lesson, that everybody needs to learn.”