Stephen Gately & Andrew Cowles
The ‘third man’ in Stephen Gately and Andy Cowles’ apartment at the time of the singer’s death saw the body the body and walked away according to his police statement.
The official statement by Bulgarian student Georgi Dochev, has been seen by British newspaper The Sun, and it is reported that Stephen’s partner probably slept beside the singer unaware that he was dead.
Whilst rumours have been flying around over what happened during that fateful evening, Dochev’s statement claims that he met the pair in a gay bar in Palma before the three of them moved onto the Black Cat bar where they stayed until approximately 4am, before the couple invited him back to their apartment for a few more drinks.
According to the report in The Sun, Georgi’s statement goes on to say; ”Once at the residence, they were talking and they became intimate, until 5.30am.” until he left Stephen and Andy asleep on the sofa and moved to a bedroom, alone, to sleep.
However, about five hours later Dochev heard the doorbell ring for a long time, but no one answered it and he carried on snoozing before getting up around a half hour later and seeing the couple sleeping on the sofa; one with his feet stretched out and the other curled up on the cushions in the foetal position.
Georgi went back to bed, and heard 32-year-old Andy get up and go into the apartment’s other bedroom, leaving Stephen ‘asleep’ on the sofa. Soon afterwards, Georgi went into the lounge for a smoke, and according to the statement, he thought that the 'dead boy' was sleeping so he went and joined Andy in the bedroom until 1pm.
That was when Dochev, got up, had a shower and sat down on the sofa beside Stephen, upon which he realised something was very wrong with the singer, as he noticed he was “very motionless and he could see no breathing movements or little snores.”
After failing to rouse the singer, Dochev alerted Andy, and the two of them tried to sit Stephen up after seeing that he was very stiff and in a foetal position with his face on the cushion. However, it was when they got him upright that that noticed his lips and face were blue and that a liquid was coming out of his mouth.
At first Andy thought he could have swallowed his tongue, so tried to free it with his fingers, but it was at that moment they realised that Stephen was dead, and called the emergency services between 1.15 and 1.30pm.
A post-mortem ruled he suffered an acute pulmonary oedema - a rapid build-up of fluid in the lungs, and as a result, police and medical experts have said Stephen died of natural causes.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison
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