Fans and friends of the late Whitney Houston drew sad parallels when the iconic singer’s only child was found unresponsive in a bathtub on Jan. 31. Now they have cause to grieve anew: Bobbi Kristina Brown, 22, died on Sunday.
“It is hard to say goodbye,” the family announced via social media on Sunday night. “On Sunday, July 26, Bobbi Kristina Brown made her transition peacefully. The family thanks everyone for their loving thoughts and prayers. As Bobbi Kristina would say: ‘The wind is behind me and the sun is in my face.’”
Brown’s medical emergency occurred just weeks shy of the third anniversary of her mother’s death. Houston died Feb. 11, 2012, at age 48 after being found unresponsive in a bathtub, a plight tragically similar to her daughter’s circumstances.
Brown was initially rushed to North Fulton Hospital. She was then transferred to Emory University Hospital, then a long-term care facility and then finally, Peachtree Christian Hospice in Duluth. The family in June announced the decision to move her to hospice care after months of being hospitalized, saying she was “in God’s hands.”
Family members and friends, including entertainment mogul Tyler Perry, had been regular visitors since she was taken there. Perry has been a trusted supporter of the family now and in the past. After Houston’s death, he arranged to have her body transported from Los Angeles to New Jersey via his private plane, and he spoke at Houston’s funeral: “Whitney Houston loved the Lord. I know nothing separated her from the love of God.”
He recently posted a message encapsulating his love for Houston and his sorrow at her daughter’s plight: “This morning I woke up with Whitney on my mind. I couldn’t help but think about all that she must have dreamed for her child. I know this was not her dream.”
Brown moved to metro Atlanta following her mother’s death. She starred in a short-lived reality show with her family, appeared in a few episodes of one of Perry’s Atlanta-filmed television shows and apparently was on the cusp of launching a music career when the medical crisis struck.
One of her final Twitter posts, loaded with smiley-face and musical instrument emoticons, hinted at a recording project in the works: “Let’s start this career up and moving OUT to TO YOU ALL quick shall we !?!???”
As her medical ordeal persisted family tension, rumors and legal action swirled. Her court-appointed representative sued her one-time companion Nick Gordon, alleging physical violence and financial impropriety. At one point someone supposedly took a photo of the incapacitated young woman and tried shopping it to celebrity media outlets, spurring outrage among her relatives.
“Some money-hungry ugly beast saw fit to take her picture … to gain dirty money in their pockets!” her aunt Leolah Brown fulminated via her public Facebook page.
The Roswell Police Department initially responded after Brown was found unresponsive. That department has since released little information, but Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has said his office was taking up the matter.
Howard has said that charges, if any, would be made at “the appropriate time.”
