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Juice WRLD died of oxycodone and codeine overdose, medical examiner says

Jarad Anthony Higgins, better known as Juice WRLD, died after what police called a "medical emergency" at Chicago's Midway Airport last month.
Image: Juice Wrld
Juice WRLD performs at The Skyline Stage at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on May 15, 2019.Owen Sweeney / Invision/AP file

Rapper Jarad Anthony Higgins, known by the stage name Juice WRLD, died from oxycodone and codeine toxicity, according to a new medical examiner statement.

Higgins died after what police called a "medical emergency" at Midway Airport in Chicago last month, but the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said at the time that it needed to run more tests to determine the cause of death.

The office officially ruled that Higgins' death was an accident Wednesday.

Local and federal authorities met the 21-year-old rapper's plane in December on suspicion he was in possession of contraband, the Chicago Police Department said at the time. Officials found 70 pounds of marijuana and six bottles of prescription codeine cough syrup in a search of the luggage on the twin-engine Gulfstream jet.

Police said Higgins began convulsing while police officers were speaking to him and others on the plane. He was given two doses of Narcan, a brand of naloxone used to block the effects of opioid overdose in emergency situations.

Higgins woke up briefly but was later declared dead at a local hospital.

The Chicago-area native was considered at the forefront of the emo rap scene. Higgins hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart last year with the studio album "Death Race for Love" and was signed to Interscope Records.

Higgins once rapped about the short lives of artists in his single "Legends," in which he said he didn't want to be known as a legend because "all the legends seem to die out."

"We keep on losing our legends to the cruel cold world," the lyrics said. "What is it coming to?"