False Alarm: Despite TMZ Hype, Prince Is 'Fine'

  • by: Alan Duke

Despite an urgent report on TMZ posted Friday afternoon that Prince was hospitalized after his private jet made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, early Friday, Lead Stories has found reasons to question the seriousness.

First, this tweet from Prince's Twitter account soon after the TMZ report was posted: "So I guess this you telling us from Chanhassen, MN, that you fine. Cool *blows out candle* WIND NOISE GOES HERE."

TMZ quoted an unnamed source Friday afternoon saying that Prince was still in the hospital and "not doing well." The website said another source told them he has been released and is doing okay.

Unless someone with a morbid sense of humor has hacked his account, the 57-year-old singer is ok.

We have confirmed that the Dassault Falcon 900 that carried Prince to Atlanta for a Thursday night show did land at Quad City International Airport in Moline at 1:08 a.m. Friday, as TMZ reported. However, the jet departed Moline 10 hours later and landed in Minneapolis after a 45 minute flight to Prince's hometown. The plane was sitting in a hangar at the Minneapolis airport several hours later, we have confirmed.

Something must have happened to Prince Friday morning, considering this tweet posted about the same time he would have been boarding his jet for home.

TMZ later caught up with the fact, quoting a spokesman for the singer saying he landed at Moline for a few hours to be treated for the flu.

This is not unlike the night TMZ reported that Lil Wayne was on his death bed and being administered last rites by a priest at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He wasn't dying.


  Alan Duke

Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke co-founded Lead Stories after ending a 26-year career with CNN, where he mainly covered entertainment, current affairs and politics. Duke closely covered domestic terrorism cases for CNN, including the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, the UNABOMBER and search for Southeast bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. CNN moved Duke to Los Angeles in 2009 to cover the entertainment beat. Duke also co-hosted a daily podcast with former HLN host Nancy Grace, "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace" and hosted the podcast series "Stan Lee's World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes & Villains." You'll also see Duke in many news documentaries, including on the Reelz channel, CNN and HLN.

Read more about or contact Alan Duke

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion