The 50 Lost Minutes

Michael Jackson’s aides took an astonishing 50 minutes to call an ambulance, it was revealed.

Their 911 emergency call was not made until frantic attempts to resuscitate him had failed. The entire drama was witnessed by the singer’s 12-year-old eldest child Prince Michael, who thought his father, was clowning around before a doctor began pumping his chest to try to start his heart. The staggeringly long time it took to get emergency services involved, disclosed by relatives, could well have contributed to the singer’s death and added yet another unanswered question about the mystery surrounding Jackson’s passing in addition to raising further questions about his physician, Dr Conrad Murray.

Dr Conrad Murray

Jackson’s family is desperately trying to piece together who did what inside the singer’s rented home after he apparently suffered a cardiac arrest. The first public detail about what happened at Jackson’s rented Los Angeles mansion emerged from Stacy Brown, a Jackson family biographer who has spoken extensively to relatives as the full extent of the tragedy unfolded. Brown told the New York Post: ‘The horror of it all is that Prince Michael thought his dad was just being his dad and clowning, but it was real, and he watched as they worked on him. Prince was stunned – in a trance – just watching. There was no movement, just looking around and not really processing what was really happening.’

Brown said he was told that when Jackson went into cardiac arrest, he was in the living room of the $100,000- per-month house with his 12-year-old son. Also there were the pop star’s personal physician Dr Conrad Murray, his one-time manager Frank DiLeo, and a security guard named Tippy.

As Jackson prepared for a trip to London, he was given a shot of Demerol painkiller at approximately 11:30am PST and collapsed on the living-room floor. ‘The guard and the doctor picked him up and put him on the bed from the living room, and that’s when they started CPR,’ he said. ‘The doctor said he was “very pale and cold to the touch”. Tippy quickly phoned Jackson’s father, Joseph, in Las Vegas, to tell him something was wrong instead of calling 911. Upon hearing the circumstances, ‘Joseph screamed at them to call for help.’ He went on to say, “a huge commotion ensued about why 911 wasn’t being called and why he wasn’t getting help.’ Tippy finally called 911 at 12:21pm PST, 50 minutes after Michael Jackson collapsed. Jackson was rushed to UCLA Medical Centre, where doctors shocked his heart and inserted a breathing tube to try to revive him, but were unsuccessful. He was declared dead at 2.26pm.