Police ruled out foul play in the sudden death of actress Kim Porter, who was found unresponsive in her bed at her Toluca Lake, CA. mansion on Thursday.
The Los Angeles Police Department released a statement saying they “do not suspect foul play” in the death of the 46-year-old mother-of-4.
Porter, who would have celebrated her 47th birthday next month, went to bed Wednesday night and apparently died in her sleep of a cardiac arrest sometime Thursday morning.
Friends tell TMZ Porter battled “flu-like symptoms” for several weeks. She called her doctor on Wednesday to say she wasn’t getting any better. Friends suspect the flu progressed to pneumonia.
Friends and associates of the former model question why she wasn’t hospitalized after suffering from a respiratory infection for several weeks.
She would have been feverish, dehydrated and in a very weakened state at the time of her death.
According to TMZ, Porter was being treated at home with “saline and vitamins”.
Normal saline is an intravenous solution containing 0.9% salt and chloride. The salt content closely matches the serum in blood and is administered via IV to patients who are dehydrated and unable or unwilling to swallow fluids.
Porter was pronounced dead by paramedics after 12 noon. Family members and friends rushed to the mansion after hearing the news. Kimora Lee Simmons was spotted sobbing inside one of the garages as Porter’s body was removed by the coroner’s office.
According to a source, a family member took Porter’s twins, D’Lila and Jessie James, to school and returned to the house to find Porter unresponsive in her bed.
Police and paramedics were called to the house just before noon Thursday. A 911 caller said a woman at the home was in full cardiac arrest, meaning her heart ceased beating.
An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death, which is standard procedure when a person unexpectedly dies at home.
The LAPD confirmed that Sean Combs, the father of three of Porter’s 4 children, was at the scene. He was “very cooperative” and visibly upset.
Combs is reportedly “devastated and shocked” at the news of Porter’s untimely death.
“He and Kim were still very close and co-parents even though their romantic relationship didn’t work,” a source told PEOPLE.
Porter and Combs dated on and off for 13 years from 1994 to 2007.
They had three children together, 11-year-old twin girls D’Lila Star and Jessie James, and a son Christian Combs, 20.
She was also mom to actor Quincy Brown, 27, from her previous relationship with music veteran Al B. Sure! from 1988 to 1990.
She dated music producer Dallas Austin, who is from her hometown of Columbus, Georgia.
It was love at first sight when Combs first laid eyes on Porter at a studio where she was with her ex, Al B. Sure!
Combs described his infatuation the leggy beauty in an interview with Essence magazine in 2006.
“I wasn’t trying to holler at her or anything, but I was admiring her — her lips, her eyes, her mouth, her shape, her energy,” he said.
Porter was hired as a receptionist at Uptown Records where Combs worked as A&R. Within months, they were inseparable.
“She wasn’t like a New York girl,” Combs said. “She was Bohemian, mixed with Georgia peach hospitality.”
He added: “I got the idea she’d like doing stuff like walking barefoot in the grass. I didn’t think I could get her to like me. She was smooth, you know, like ice. She’s cool and collected and thinks before she speaks. You meet a lot of young ladies, and they just don’t do that. Kim was never pressed. She was always in control.”
Porter added, “We went out together, we ate together, we played together. He would want me at the office. I would want him at my [photo] shoots. Our bond was so tight.”
But that bond was broken when Combs cheated on her with singer Jennifer Lopez while Porter was pregnant with Christian.
The couple made headlines and drew crowds of paparazzi everywhere they went.
But Porter was unbothered.
“Everywhere I went, people were asking, “Are you okay?'” Porter told Essence.
“They were talking to me like I was really crushed. But I just had a baby. I couldn’t be somewhere in a corner heartbroken. I have kids. I’m a grown woman.”
Porter kicked Combs out of the house they shared at the time, and he moved on with Lopez for two years — until he faced charges of bribery and weapons possession stemming from a nightclub shooting.
Lopez kicked Combs to the curb to save her own career, and Combs reached out to Porter, who took him back.
“I think the threat of losing his freedom forced him to grow up and take responsibility for his actions,” she said.
Then Porter learned one of her friends, Atlanta socialite Sarah Chapman, was pregnant with Combs’s child — a daughter that he’d always wanted.
After visiting a fertility doctor, Porter was ecstatic to learn she was pregnant with twin girls.
Her and Combs’ twin daughters were born in 2006 — 5 months after Chapman gave birth to her daughter, Chance.
But their happy reunion didn’t last. Porter soon found out Combs was still seeing Chapman behind her back.
Porter waited until he was out of town, then she packed up everything. She took the twins, the cars, clothes, and furniture.
“There was no other way,” Porter told Essence in 2007. “You think he would have let me walk out the door?”
She added: “Puffy’s an action person, not a talk person. So I had to have an action. Telling him, ‘Babe, I’m leaving,’ was not gonna do it.”
Porter soon got over her hard feelings and warmed up to Chapman’s daughter, Chance, now 12. Chance and her twin half-siblings are inseparable and even attend the same school together.
Porter and Combs remained close friends until the day she died.
“You know how when two people go their separate ways, most of the time there’s animosity? It’s not like that with us,” she told Essence in 2007.
“Sean and I have this bond, this friendship. I’m the person he can tell his inner most thoughts to and he’s that person for me. He still calls me every day and we talk.”
Their last outing as a family was the special screening of Netflix’s ‘The Holiday Calendar’ starring Porter’s oldest son, Quincy, in Los Angeles on October 30.
Porter was there with 2 of her exes — Combs and Al B. Sure! She took photos with both men and their blended families.
She posted the photos from the event on her Instagram page, along with the caption:
“I laughed I cried I got in the holiday spirit but most of all I got to see @quincy live out his Dream.. #proudmom #blendedfamily #netflixmovies”.
Singer Kelly Rowland, left, actress Kim Porter, center, and actress Angela Bassett attend a personal appearance by Simone I. Smith at Bloomingdale’s on May 12, 2011 in Century City, California.
Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs arrives with Kim Porter to the 77th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater on February 27, 2005 in Hollywood, California.
Nicole Johnson, Eboni Electra and Kim Porter (Three Brown Girls) attend The Moet & Chandon’s Sex and the City 2 Private Screening at Wooduff Arts Center on May 26, 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Photos by Charley Gallay/Getty Images, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images, Mat Szwajkos/CP/Getty Images, Peter Kramer/Getty, Giulio Marcocchi/Getty, Mark Mainz/Getty Images, Vince Bucci/Getty Images, Rick Diamond/Getty Images, Mark Mainz/Getty Images, Vasquez-Max Lopes / BACKGRID
