Irish Daily Mirror

Prince’s so-called friends denying his family justice

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But the judge disagreed after learning 55,000 people who have participat­ed in the trick know how it works.

After 13 audience members are chosen by random, they are then seated on the stage inside a suspended cage.

A curtain is drawn around them while they shine torches giving the impression they are still there.

The curtain is then pulled away and the participan­ts reappear at the back of the audience.

Lawyers for Cox say people didn’t see the “chaos” behind the scenes that they claim led him to fall and suffer lasting brain damage.

The case has been running since 2014 and only now has come to trial.

Just goes to show the best trick is the one where lawyers make your money disappear.

When officials announced they were closing the investigat­ion into Prince’s drug-fuelled death without charging anyone, it marked an all-too-familiar failure.

While authoritie­s said they found no indication­s of foul play, the Purple Rain singer, 57, died after unknowingl­y taking a counterfei­t Vicodin pill laced with fentanyl.

But despite the US musician being one of the most famous men on the planet, a multi-million dollar police investigat­ion led to no charges being brought.

It highlighte­d how whether someone is a grotesquel­y rich superstar or a homeless person on the streets, the drug pushers who fuel their deaths very rarely face the justice they deserve.

The opioid crisis requires immediate attention not because Prince lost his life but because almost all of us knows someone, who has been damaged, sometimes beyond repair, by drug abuse.

In the US, 60,000 die each year. If a terrorist killed that many we would find focus and we should do the same with this lethal threat.

But while authoritie­s must fight the war on the drugs, those around addicts such a Prince also have a part to play.

None of us knows the kind things those close to the singer did to warrant their place within his inner circle or how deep their friendship was but one thing is clear – several betrayed him.

According to documents from the investigat­ion, the singer had nearly 68 micrograms of fentanyl per litre of blood in his system at the time of his death in 2016.

It was 22 times the amount absorbed by a cancer patient who regularly wears a prescripti­on fentanyl patch to manage pain. There is no question that many of the drugs that killed Prince, hidden in aspirin bottles on a bedside table, were obtained illegally.

With so many people constantly clinging to his fame, someone surely knows how they ended up there.

But according to investigat­ors, none of his supposed friends – the people who’d you of thought were looking out for him – talked.

No wonder his family are disgusted. The singer’s cousin Charles Smith said: “I’m outraged by people in Prince’s inner circle not speaking up about what really happened. Those people who were around him when he died, they know what went on.”

And he’s right. Their silence is shameful and betrays everything they appeared to be proving that it was nothing more than a sham.

The truest friends are the ones whom we tell our deepest secrets to or can call on at whatever time of day for help and they’ll be there.

Then there and acquaintan­ces.

But it seems Prince had a fourth group around him – enablers who masquerade­d as friends but in truth only wanted to use his fame or fortune.

It is not unusual for those in the public eye.

With the fame Prince had he would certainly have been surrounded by a lot of people.

So it is even more tragic now – since it was revealed his death was entirely avoidable – his supposed friends around him at the time could not, even worse would not, save him from his downfall.

Even when they could have helped justice be served by telling police what they knew, the reality is they were no real friends of Prince.

Those around addicts such as Prince also have a part in drugs war

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