Rapper Juice Wrld reportedly swallowed several Percocet pills to hide them from police before they could search him at an airport.
Juice Wrld, real name Jarad Higgins, reportedly swallowed the narcotic painkillers after arriving on a private jet at Chicago’s Midway Airport around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 8.
The rapper and his entourage were detained in a private hangar away from the main airport terminal while federal drug agents conducted searches of their bags.
The feds and other officers were waiting for the plane to arrive from Los Angeles after the pilot called ahead to inform police that the rapper was traveling with guns and 70 pounds of marijuana.
As the agents were going through two carts of luggage, Higgins — “began convulsing (and) going into a seizure,” sources tell The Chicago Tribune. An agent administered two doses of Narcan, an emergency treatment to reverse the effects of opioid overdose.
Medics revived Higgins but he was disoriented and bleeding from the mouth after possibly biting his tongue.
The Chicago-born rapper, who turned 21 on Dec. 2, went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 3:14 a.m, about an hour after he collapsed.
A search of the plane turned up 41 “vacuum-sealed” bags of marijuana, six bottles of prescription codeine cough syrup with no labels, two 9 mm pistols, a .40-caliber pistol, a high-capacity ammunition magazine and metal-piercing bullets, law enforcement sources told The Tribune.
No one on board the flight claimed ownership of the drugs and no charges were filed. Two security guards were arrested for carrying loaded weapons inside an airport.
Percocet is a Schedule II narcotic that contains Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and the opioid oxycodone (OxyContin). Percocet sells for $10-$40 per pill on the street. OxyContin can fetch $40-$80 per pill on the street.
Rappers usually take the pills with lean, aka purple drank. Lean is a concoction of codeine cough syrup, Jolly Rancher candy and a soda beverage.
Lean and Percocets or OxyContin are the drugs of choice for rappers like Juice Wrld who rapped extensively about his drug addictions in his songs.
Rapper Joyner Lucas criticized other rappers for glorifying drug use.
“Juice wrld was 21,” Lucas tweeted on Monday. “He was a product of our generation of rappers who glorified drugs and made it cool. Im blaming Yal n***** for this shit. all that lean and pills n***** glorify and talk about. You teaching the kids to do it. Smh you happy now?Rip @JuiceWorlddd. Gone too soon.”
Canadian rapper Drake mourned Juice in an Instagram post, saying “I would like to see all the younger talent live longer and I hate waking up hearing another story filled with blessings was cut short”.
