5-11-2016-ERNIE ALLEN’S-TOP STORY-
CHANHASSEN, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota doctor saw Prince twice in the month before his death, including the day before he died, and prescribed him medication, according to contents of a search warrant that were revealed Tuesday even as authorities revisited the musician’s estate.
Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg treated Prince on April 7 and April 20, and he prescribed “medications and prescriptions” for the musician, according to the warrant, which was filed Thursday in Hennepin County and obtained by at least two news outlets before authorities moved to ensure it was sealed.
Investigators interviewed Schulenberg and searched a suburban Minneapolis hospital where he worked. The warrant did not specify what medications were prescribed for Prince or whether he took them.
Contents of the warrant were revealed the same day that authorities returned to Prince’s Paisley Park home and studio in suburban Minneapolis where he was found dead April 21. A sheriff’s vehicle entered through the gates of Paisely Park on Tuesday afternoon, followed by about a dozen unmarked vehicles. Asked why investigators had returned to Paisely Park, Carver County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud told The Associated Press by phone that they were “being thorough.”
Kamerud said he could not answer questions about the search warrant that names Schulenberg because it was supposed to be sealed.
The warrant was carried out at North Memorial Medical Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale.
Lesa Bader, a spokeswoman for North Memorial Medical Center, said Schulenberg was a primary care physician at its Minnetonka clinic but that he no longer works for the health care system. No one answered the door at the doctor’s home on Tuesday and a phone message left for him wasn’t immediately returned.
Schulenberg’s April 7 treatment of Prince came the day he canceled shows in Atlanta citing illness. He played makeup shows April 14, then fell ill on the flight home and was taken by ambulance from the plane during an emergency landing Moline, Illinois.
A law enforcement official has told the AP that investigators are looking into whether Prince died from an overdose and whether a doctor was prescribing him drugs in the weeks before his death. The law enforcement official has been briefed on the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The search warrant naming Schulenberg seeks “any and all medical records, documents, reports, charts, photographs, prescriptions, doctor notes and medical images for Prince Rogers Nelson.” The warrant, signed by Carver County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Nelson, also seeks any and all legal records attached to those files.
Schulenberg told Nelson that tests were performed on Prince and that he had gone to Paisley Park to drop off the results when he came on the death scene, according to the warrant. Schulenberg also told the detective that he had prescribed Prince “medications” with the prescription to be filled at a Walgreen’s.
The warrant also notes an interview with Kirk Anthony Johnson, a Paisley Park staff member and sometime drummer for Prince, who told another detective that Prince had visited the Highway 212 Medical Center in Chaska for “an illness” in 2014 or 2015. Johnson told the detective that Prince had been given fluids during the visit.
Carver County previously released a log of 911 calls to Paisley Park that showed a 53-year-old man, apparently dehydrated, taken to Highway 212 Medical Center in 2013. That man’s age was given as 53; Prince would have been 55 at the time. A hospital spokeswoman said earlier she couldn’t provide any information patients due to privacy laws.
By KEVIN BURBACH, AMY FORLITI Associated Press
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