Yahoo News Bobbi Kristina Brown's roommate, Max Lomas, who found her unresponsive in the bathtub, has reportedly died of an overdose
Max Lomas, who was a fixture in the mystery surrounding Bobbi Kristina Brown’s drowning death, has reportedly died of an overdose.
TMZ reports that while the Atlanta-based Lomas was at a friend’s home in Mississippi, he went into the bathroom and then never came out. Lomas was found “unresponsive on the floor” with “a syringe near his body.” He was rushed to the hospital, where he died of an apparent overdose.
Lomas, who was Whitney Houston‘s daughter’s housemate and ex-boyfriend, was the one who discovered her lifeless body in a bathtub in her Alpharetta, Ga., home on Jan. 31, 2015. He alerted her then-boyfriend, Nick Gordon, who was in another room, and first responders were called. But after being in a coma for six months, Bobbi Kristina died on July 26, 2015. While the official cause of death was pneumonia, the medical examiner said in a statement that she died from complications caused by her face being immersed in water, along with drug intoxication.
While no charges were filed related to Brown’s death, according to TMZ, Gordon was later found liable and ordered to pay $36 million in a civil suit filed by Brown’s conservators (including Bobbi Kristina’s father, New Edition singer Bobby Brown). An amendment to the suit alleged that Gordon gave Bobbi Kristina a “toxic cocktail, rendering her unconscious, and then put her face down in a tub of cold water causing her to suffer brain damage,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gordon’s attorneys called the accusations “slanderous and meritless.” No criminal charges have been filed against Gordon in Bobbi-Kristina’s death.
Lomas had been out with Gordon at a club the night before Bobbi Kristina died, according to E! News, and found himself pulled into the headlines. He gave his first interview to People in 2016, saying that the night before she died, Bobbi Kristina had called Gordon and started arguing with him, accusing him of cheating. Lomas and Gordon reportedly headed home — where the argument continued and escalated — but Lomas said that Bobbi Kristina and Gordon eventually made up. The next day, when a cable provider showed up at the house, Lomas went to get Bobbi Kristina and found her face-down in a tub of cold water in the bathroom.
Lomas, who admitted he was using drugs the night Bobbi Kristina died, was frank about his troubles, including drug dependency and a stint in jail for a probation violation. He talked to People about Bobbi Kristina and Gordon’s relationship, too, calling it “bipolar” and adding that they had “extreme highs and lows and would fight, mostly about jealousy.”
Lomas, who, like Gordon, was taken in by Bobbi Kristina’s superstar mother as a teen, said that two weeks before the tub incident, “We all decided that we were going to get off drugs, live healthier lifestyles. We all went to the gym together. But it didn’t work out. We started using again.’” A lawyer for Gordon was dismissive of Lomas’s account of the night, calling him “a drug addict,” according to People. Gordon has since been arrested on unrelated domestic violence charges.
Yahoo Entertainment reached out to two attorneys for Lomas, both of whom represented him following Bobbi Kristina’s death, but neither could confirm Lomas’s death. Ashleigh Merchant of the Merchant Law Firm in Marietta, Ga., said, “I haven’t spoken with him in years.” And Philip A. Holloway of the Holloway Law Group in the same city, said, “I only know what’s been reported publicly. Various media are asking, but I haven’t had any contact with him for quite some time.”
However, Gordon seemed to confirm the report, telling Radar Online on Friday, “How do you think I’m doing? How would you feel if you lost a friend?” And several of Lomas’s other friends have been posting about his death on Facebook for a couple days.
Of course, the prelude to this sad saga was Houston’s death in 2012. Like her daughter and Lomas, she was also found dead in a bathroom and had been using drugs.
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