Bobbi Kristina Brown has hinted at a future recording career and appeared in two short-lived reality shows about her family and some episodes of a show produced by close family friend Tyler Perry. Otherwise, she’s lived a relatively private life in metro Atlanta.
Despite the miles of red carpet Atlanta loves to unfurl for movie premieres and fancy parties, not to mention the city’s booming clutch of popular night clubs, the 21-year-old daughter of the late Whitney Houston and singer Bobby Brown hasn’t been a fixture on the social scene.
The police incident report filed after she was found unresponsive Jan. 31 even spelled her name wrong.
Yet her grave condition has absolutely captivated people here and across the nation.
“Whitney’s only baby,” observed Tony and Grammy Award-winning singer Jennifer Holliday, who got to know Whitney Houston when they both were launching their careers in New York in the 1980s. Houston died at age 48, exactly three years ago Wednesday, after being found face-down in a Beverly Hills bathtub. Her only child and heir to her estate has been hospitalized for more than a week after being discovered under eerily similar circumstances.
The robust appetite for the slightest scrap of news, not to mention the endless speculation ever since, speaks to something in our communal consciousness, said Atlanta filmmaker and cable news contributor Goldie Taylor.
“In this day and age, social media has given us a sense of connectivity we didn’t have before,” she said. “When we mourned the death of icons such as Audrey Hepburn, we didn’t know them. Today, we feel like we know them.”
Despite separate pleas from both sides of her family for privacy, local and national media have set up camp outside Emory University Hospital, where Brown was moved midweek. Her situation has not only consumed celebrity media outlets but also has been featured on cable news networks and local broadcasts.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s own internal data illustrate the public’s voracious yen. Online traffic for this story alone on the “Buzz” blog, which usually reports on local star sightings and television/movie filming activity, has eclipsed the total traffic on the blog for the months of October 2014 through January combined. It’s logged about 10 times the online traffic as the story of the Georgia State University art project camera that alarmed authorities and was detonated, completely shutting down the Connector in both directions for hours last week.
“I’m not surprised by the ravenous nature of the crowds looking for information,” Taylor said. “We as a media-consuming public feel like (celebrities) owe us everything. We feel like we have a right to be inside their lives.”
Amid a flurry of rumors last week that Brown’s family was preparing to say goodbye, her father, singer Bobby Brown, said through his lawyer: “If we issued a statement every time the media published a false report regarding this matter, that’s all we would be doing 24 hours a day. This is false, just as is the vast majority of the other reporting that is currently taking place.”
The Houston family issued a statement as well: “Bobbi Kristina is fighting for her life and is surrounded by immediate family. As her father already stated, we are asking you to honor our request for privacy during this difficult time.”
Hospital representatives have released no information, citing medical privacy laws. The Roswell Police Department, which responded to the 911 call that documents show was logged as a “drowning,” initially released some information about the case. Investigators didn’t see signs of a struggle and didn’t find any drugs “out in the open” at Brown’s townhouse, spokesperson Lisa Holland said in the hours after Brown was rushed to the hospital.
She later declined to comment on more recent reports of what authorities may have found on subsequent, more thorough searches and search warrants associated with the investigation have been sealed.
“There are a lot of rumors, myths and theories out there,” Holland said Saturday. “This is still an open investigation, and we are not providing any information about this case to anyone until the case is completed. We are just calling it a rescue case.”
Public records and social media posts illustrate Bobbi Kristina Brown’s tense, possibly troubled life.
In May 2011, at 18, she was cited for underage drinking by Roswell police but not arrested. In November 2012, several months after Houston’s death, the then-19-year-old was cited by Alpharetta police authorities for “failure to maintain lane” after she wrecked her car. On the same day, her then-boyfriend Nick Gordon was arrested after police clocked him doing 82 in a 35 mph zone in Alpharetta.
“Sometimes things like that happen,” Gordon told Channel 2 Action News at the time. “Everything’s cool. Everything’s fine.”
In January 2014, Brown announced via Twitter that she and Gordon had tied the knot, using the hashtag #HappilyMarried, and has kept her social media streams peppered with romantic photos and effusive comments about her “husband.”
Both sides of her family have disputed that the two are legally wed, though, teeing up potential legal wrangling over who is authorized to make decisions about her care and who would inherit her estate if the worst happens. She’s the sole heir of Houston’s fortune, most of which is held in trust until she turns 30. If she were to pass away before then, her grandmother Cissy Houston and two of Whitney Houston’s brothers stand to inherit the money, the New York Daily News has reported.
In March 2014, Brown’s aunt Marion “Pat” Houston took out a restraining order against Gordon, Fulton County documents show. Other records show the townhouse where Brown and Gordon have been living is owned by an LLC in White Plains, N.Y. Pat Houston’s signature appears on documents associated with the property. Cissy Houston and Pat Houston were among the family members arriving at the hospital last week.
The one-season reality show “Houstons: On Our Own,” hinted at fissures within the family, with Brown’s relatives receiving her announcement that she and Gordon were “engaged” with little enthusiasm.
In July 2014, Brown lashed out after someone posted a photo purported to be her, smoking marijuana.
“I’ve never posted any photo of me doing anything!” she said at the time. “This is someone trying to tarnish and make a horrible name for MYSELF. People are insane.”
Gordon has posted carefree references to drug use on his Twitter feed: “Smoke your weed and be happy,” he posted last march.
Both Gordon and Brown blasted critics who commented with alarm at her emaciated frame last year.
“My baby is perfect the way she is,” Gordon wrote, followed by an invitation to reporters to perform an intimate act on a portion of his anatomy.
Brown posted a one-finger salute and wrote “Think I care?”
Just days before her medical emergency, Brown faced an Alpharetta Municipal Court bench warrant stemming from failure to appear on a charge of driving with an expired tag. Authorities have dismissed the matter given her grim medical condition.
For Holliday, it all points to a disturbing pattern and she said Brown’s family members “had to have known” that she was in peril.
“Someone needed to be angry and yelling, like I am right now,” she said. “Where are the grown people? I’m sad but I’m more angry. I want to fight, I want to scream. From the time her mother died she should have been in constant therapy, under constant watch. Where were the adults? She’s been surrounded by some of the worst people only looking out for their own interests.”
Former Atlanta radio personality Frank Ski knew Whitney Houston and said that following her death, people mourned the superstar singer and feared for her daughter.
“People grieved Whitney, but everyone was worried about that little girl,” Ski said. A friend of many celebrities in Atlanta over the years, he’s seen the pressure that fame can exact.
“Most people don’t know how hard it is to be famous and the pressure that comes with that, the pressure to always be on,” he said. “Celebrities can’t make new friends.”
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