On September 7, 2006 — years after J. Howard Marshall died in 1995 — Anna Nicole Smith welcomed another child, daughter Dannielynn Birkhead, with photographer Larry Birkhead. However, tragedy struck three days later when her son Daniel Smith died at just 20 years old while visiting his mother and sister at Doctors Hospital in the Bahamas. “He was found in a condition of non-responsiveness. I am not certain who made the alarm, and doctors were called in but he was pronounced dead,” Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force told People at the time.
Opening up about the tragic event later, Anna Nicole’s lawyer Howard K. Stern recounted waking up to the model’s cries for help. “Well, I remember Anna saying ‘Howard, Howard, wake up! Daniel’s not breathing!'” Stern told Entertainment Tonight (via CBS). “I went over and checked his neck and I didn’t feel anything and we immediately called the nurse.”
Read Related Also: Black Ranchers Arrested In Racist Conspiracy To Steal Their Land
It was later determined that Daniel died from a lethal combination of drugs, including methadone and antidepressants. During a 2008 inquest about Daniel’s death, Dr. Lee Hern — a lab director at the Miami-Dade County medical examiner’s office — suggested that, given the amount of methadone Daniel ingested, Daniel might have intentionally overdosed. “But for the methadone, he would not have died,” he said, per Daily Mail.
