Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins dead at 50; 10 psychoactive substances present in system at time of death
Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has passed away at age 50, the band announced on Twitter on Friday.
The Orange County native is survived by his wife and children.
Hawkins was raised in Laguna Beach. He played with the Foo Fighters for the last 25 years.
"The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins. His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever. Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time," the band said in its Twitter post.
The Foo Fighters are currently on tour in Bogota, Colombia. Police vehicles, an ambulance, and fans were gathered outside the hotel in northern Bogota where Hawkins was believed to have been staying.
The band was scheduled to perform Sunday at Lollapalooza in Brazil.
On Saturday, Colombia's District Secretary of Health issued a press release, detailing that Hawkins died moments after suffering chest pains.
Initially released in Spanish, the translated statement reads in part, "The city's Emergency and Emergency Regulatory Center received a report about a patient with chest pain in a hotel located north of the city. An ambulance was dispatched to attend to the case."
It further went on to note that medical professionals that were first on scene attempted to resuscitate Hawkins, though he was unresponsive to their attempts and was pronounced dead at the scene.
As the investigation continued, Colombia's Prosecutor's Office released a statement detailing that Hawkins had 10 psychoactive substances in his system at the time of his death. Among those substances included were marijuana, opioids, tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines.
His exact cause of death still has yet to be released.
