The Los Angeles coroner's ruling on what killed Corey Haim last month
should be released this week, according to an investigator.
While
those closest to the 1980s teen actor say they don't think he
overdosed, California Attorney General Jerry Brown last week called Haim
"the poster child" for the problem of addicts "doctor shopping" for
dangerous drugs.
Haim, 38, died on March 10 after collapsing at
the Los Angeles apartment he shared with his mother.
The coroner
has been waiting on toxicology lab results before deciding the primary
cause of Haim's death, Los Angeles County deputy coroner Ed Winter said.
With that completed, the coroner is wrapping up the autopsy report, he
said.
The initial autopsy examination revealed Haim
suffered from pneumonia and had water on his lungs and an enlarged
heart, Winter said.
His family suspected Haim's sudden death was
caused by a bad reaction to a single pill given to him by an addiction specialist who was treating Haim,
his manager Mark Heaslip said.
Although he battled drug addiction for
decades, his death came when Haim "was making major progress" with a
program to wean him from pills, Heaslip said.
State
investigators, however, found that the former child actor obtained four
dangerous drugs -- including Vicodin, Valium, Soma and Xanax -- just
five days before he died, Brown
said.
Brown launched a probe of what he said was Haim's "doctor
shopping" for drugs. Seven different doctors gave him prescriptions for
four controlled substances in the last 10 weeks of his life, Brown said.
Haim visited several emergency rooms and urgent care clinics with
complaints of an injured shoulder or depression issues, according to
Sara Simpson, head of the state task force investigating doctor
shopping.
The deputy coroner revealed last month that Haim
obtained drugs using prescriptions written under the names of 20 Los
Angeles doctors in the past year. The coroner subpoenaed medical records
from those doctors.
Haim also obtained at least one prescription
of OxyContin through the use of an illegally obtained prescription pad,
Brown said.
State agents arrested one person last month in
connection with what Brown said was a massive drug ring that obtained
and sold the counterfeit prescription pads.
Haim sometimes
threatened to find other doctors to prescribe him drugs when his primary
physician wouldn't give him what he wanted, his manager said.
"I
would be the only one who could talk him out of it," Heaslip said
Monday night.
His doctor was providing pills only in one-day
supplies in an effort to wean him, Heaslip said.
His manager said
that if Haim was cheating on his addiction program, he would probably
not have admitted it to him, since Heaslip would have dropped Haim as a
client.
Haim's primary care doctor would constantly follow up
with urgent care centers that he believed were writing prescriptions for
Haim, Heaslip said. The doctor later gave the information to
investigators, he said.
Simpson, of the state task force,
confirmed to CNN that Haim's doctor was helping investigators.
Haim
began his acting career in 1982, with his first television appearance
on the Canadian series "The Edison Twins." His first film role was in
the 1984 American movie "First Born."
Haim also won rave reviews
for his title role in the 1986 film "Lucas." Film critic Roger Ebert
said of him at the time, "If he continues to act this well, he will
never become a half-forgotten child star, but will continue to grow into
an important actor."
His most famous role was in the 1987 movie
"The Lost Boys," in which Haim played a fresh-faced teenager whose
brother becomes a vampire.
In recent years, the
actor was reunited with longtime friend and frequent co-star Corey
Feldman in a reality show. "The Two Coreys" ran for two seasons on the
A&E Network before it was canceled.
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