According to TMZ, Chris Cornell used “red elastic exercise band” to take his own life after performing at a concert in Detroit Wednesday night.
Sources tell the site that the SOUNDGARDEN frontman secured the band attached to a carabiner to the top of his hotel bathroom door. A carabiner is a device commonly used by mountain climbers which they attach to a belt to keep them from falling. The device can withstand enormous weight. Cornell jammed the door shut with the carabiner at the top of the frame. The carabiner was jammed so tight it left an indentation in the door frame.
According to the police report, obtained by The Detroit News, Chris was on the phone with his wife, Vicky, shortly before committing suicide, who said he sounded “groggy” and repeatedly told her, “I am just tired,” before hanging up. The bodyguard, Martin Kirsten, went to Cornell‘s room in the MGM Grand Hotel just after midnight and kicked two doors open — the front door as well as a second door leading to the bedroom suite — before finding Cornell slumped on the bathroom floor “with blood running from his mouth and a red exercise band around [his] neck.”
MGM medic Dawn Jones arrived at the room at 12:56 a.m., the report said. “Jones untied the red exercise band from [the] victim’s neck and began CPR on [Cornell, who] was not breathing.”
At 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, Cornell was pronounced dead by a doctor who came to the scene, the report said.
On Thursday afternoon, the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office announced Cornell‘s cause of death “has been determined as suicide by hanging.” But, it added, “A full autopsy report has not yet been completed.”
