Lisa Marie Presley died from a second cardiac arrest suffered while she was in hospital, it has emerged, and passed away after the family signed a ‘do not resuscitate’ order.
The 54-year-old only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley was rushed to hospital on Thursday morning after she was found by her housekeeper collapsed inside her Calabasas home.
EMTs arriving at her home managed to revive her and she regained a pulse, but she was brain dead on arrival at hospital, TMZ reported on Friday.
The family rushed to her bedside, where she was in an induced coma and on life support. On learning she was already brain dead they signed a ‘do not resuscitate’ order.
She suffered a second cardiac arrest and died.
Her mother Priscilla, 77, was by her bedside.
‘It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,’ Priscilla Presley said in a statement Thursday evening.
‘She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known.’
Ex-husband Danny Keough – her first of four, with whom she lived – had returned to the house shortly after she collapsed, and performed CPR until the paramedics arrived.
Keough is the father of her actress daughter Riley, 33, and son Benjamin, who took his own life in July 2020 aged 27.
Her fourth husband Michael Lockwood is the father of Presley’s 14-year-old twin daughters Harper Vivienne and Finlay.
Lisa Marie had become reclusive since her son’s death, but was emerging in part thanks to the success of the Baz Luhrmann biopic Elvis, which she loved.
Fans said the daughter of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, who had not posted on Instagram since August, looked ‘incredibly sad’ and ‘really hurting’, two years on from the suicide of her son Benjamin Keough, who is buried alongside Elvis at Graceland.
In 2019, Lisa Marie opened up about grappling with an addiction to prescription painkillers. In the foreword for Harry Nelson’s book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, she wrote that she was “grateful to be alive today,” after being prescribed opioids for pain after the birth of her daughters Vivienne and Finley.
“It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them,” she wrote. “[I’m] grateful to be alive today… and to have four beautiful children who have given me a sense of purpose that has carried me through dark times.”
She told the Today show in August 2018 that her addiction problems began about six years prior “It’s a difficult path to overcome this dependence and to put my life back together,” she continued in the foreword to Nelson’s book.
“Even in recent years, I have seen too many people I loved struggle with addiction and die tragically from this epidemic. It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction. We have to stop blaming and judging ourselves and the people around us … That starts with sharing our stories.”
