Today marks 17 years since the death of the “king of pop”, Michael Jackson. The artist died on June 25, 2009a few hours after a rehearsal. From that moment there was a controversial photograph taken by a paparazzi, which was sold for US$500 thousand.
Weeks earlier, Jackson had appeared confused, unable to remember the lyrics to his songs. However, the day before his death, the artist looked renewed: he had managed to complete a rehearsal of more than three hours at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with a complete repertoire that surprised his team.
Hours later, now In the early hours of June 25, the singer arrived at the mansion he rented on North Carolwood Drive, in the exclusive area of Holmby Hills, Los Angeles.
«Exhausted but euphoric, he begged Dr. Conrad Murray, his personal physician, to administer propofol, the powerful anesthetic he used every night to fall asleep. Murray avoided giving it and resorted to other sedatives. I had been trying to break that habit for days. Then the usual protocol began: Valium, lorazepam, midazolam. Several of each, in increasing doses, without result. Jackson was still awake. Finally, around 10:40 a.m., he relented and injected 25 milligrams of the anesthetic. Shortly after, the musician finally fell asleep,” he says. Infobae.
The doctor left the room and made some calls, but when he returned around noon, Michael was not breathing.
According to testimonies cited by the media, Murray put away some medical supplies and then called 911 and tried to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers while the ambulance arrived. Upon receiving the paramedics he told them that the artist was not taking any medication.
Meanwhile, paparazzi Alfred Ibáñez was outside, who used to monitor the place to capture the artist in his daily life. Seeing the ambulance, he called his boss, Ben Evenstad, to alert him. This, in turn, He called Christopher Weiss, who was about 13 kilometers away, to drop everything and go with him.
Upon arrival, they still found the ambulance and, as it began to back out of the mansion, Evenstad shouted to his photographers: “This could be the biggest photo ever. Get up to the windows and shoot. I don’t care if you can’t see. Just shoot.”“.
Despite the bodyguard’s attempts to keep them away, The paparazzi leaned their cameras against the glass of the ambulance and began shooting, without even being able to see where Jackson was.
As they followed the ambulance to the University of California Medical Center, Weiss checked his camera. «I thought: ‘I didn’t get it.’ “It depressed me to lose a photo that could have been important,” he once said, without knowing that among the stored images there was a valuable photograph.
At the end of the day, Evenstad gathered all the memory cards and, on Weiss’s card, he found his gold mine: a photograph of Jackson in profile, strapped to a stretcher, while paramedics performed chest compressions and administered oxygen through his mouth.
«Chris, you made up for every stupid thing you’ve ever done in your life. We have a usable image of MJ on the back», he told the author in a call.
Moments later the news broke that the artist had died and The controversial photograph, the last of the artist alive, was sold for about US$500,000 to the magazine OK!.