Pop Idol star Darius Campbell Danesh’s autopsy results have finally been revealed by his heartbroken girlfriend, almost a year on from his death.
The singer, 41, was found unresponsive in his US apartment in August 2022 and died five days later, with the cause of death still a mystery.
But now that cause has been revealed by his partner Lauren Cheek, who told The Sun that Darius was suffering an undiagnosed heart problem.
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She said his heart had swelled to twice its normal size.
In addition, Darius suffered from a broken neck, left over from a horrific car accident in 2010, which still caused him chronic pain.
It is reported that Darius collapsed after taking the recreational inhalant and painkiller chloroethane at his Rochester apartment in Minnesota.
Lauren told The Sun: “Darius was living with this heart condition that he didn’t know he had.
“So many things could have taken him, but this one thing did, and he died in his sleep.”
She added that the star “refused” to ask for help for his broken neck, explaining: “I think he used [chloroethane] because he was in so much pain and he didn’t want to take pills, not even aspirin.
“That’s what killed him — the substance mixed with his heart and he couldn’t take it.”
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Lauren said that his mum only found out about Darius’s heart condition after the autopsy was performed, branding his swollen heart “fitting” because “he had so much love”.
Darius was “three millimetres from death” in his 2010 car crash, but turned down surgery on his “trauma compression injury” as he feared it would damage his voice.
The star was a passenger in a Porsche when it hit a wall at 70mph, causing one of his vertebrae to crack down the middle.
A nurse told him at the time: “Three millimetres this way, you no walk; three millimetres that way, you’re dead.”
Campbell told Hello! Magazine at the time: “It was like how you’d talk to a baby, but I knew what she was trying to say – I was the luckiest man alive.
(Image: Handout)
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“Because of the haze, we didn’t see that there was a diesel spill on the road. Before we could work out what was going on, it was already too late.
“The car careered out control on a bend, and we smashed into a wall at 70mph. My first recollection is my friend, the driver, asking if I was okay.”
Darius initially shot to fame on the 2001 show Popstars, where he performed Britney’s Baby One More Time – before going on to reach the final of Pop Idol the following year.
After that, he made a huge number of TV appearances, including on game show Popstar to Operastar, Songs of Praise and Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
