Whitney Houston has died, her rep confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.
At a news conference, police officials said they received a call at 3:23 p.m. Saturday saying that someone was unconscious at the Beverly Hilton. Emergency crews summoned to the scene tried to resuscitate the singer in her room on the fourth floor. Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. She was 48.
Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen said that there were “no obvious signs of criminal intent” and that the cause of death was being investigated.
The R&B singer and six-time Grammy winner was due to make an appearance at Clive Davis’s Grammy eve gala on Saturday night at the Hilton. She was spotted in the hotel on Thursday morning, when she was overheard chastising an assistant.
Later that night, Houston got into an altercation with The X Factor finalist Stacy Francis at an R&B appreciation event, where she was said to be acting “belligerent.” On Friday night, as THR broke news that Houston had been approached for a seat on the judges’ panel on The X Factor, her publicist said the singer was at a spa.
Says a source close to Davis, “This is a sad day, and it will be a sad Grammys weekend.”
“Whitney Houston was one of the world’s greatest pop singers of all time, who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades,” Recording Academy president Neil Portnow said Saturday. ”A light has been dimmed in our music community today.”
