'Amazing Race' Producer's Death: Heroin Found in Hotel Room - East Idaho News
Arts & Entertainment

‘Amazing Race’ Producer’s Death: Heroin Found in Hotel Room

  Published at

ht jeff rice namibia wy 120223 wmain?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1330097986706Courtesy Josh Gates(LONDON) — A white powdered substance containing heroin was found in the Uganda hotel room where former The Amazing Race producer Jeff Rice was found dead last week, officials said.

Police in Uganda are now waiting for Katheryne Fuller, who was in Kampala to help Rice film a documentary, to recover after she was found unconscious on a hotel balcony next to Rice last Friday. Both were rushed to a hospital where Rice was declared dead from what authorities believe to be a cocaine overdose.

Officials will question Fuller regarding the substance found in a plastic bag in their room and the South African woman could be charged with breaking drug laws after she tested positive for cocaine in her system.

A source told ABC News that Fuller was conscious, but was slurring her words and didn’t know immediately where she was.

“The bag of white powder that was found on scene is a mixture of a component of heroin and some Tylenol and some caffeine,” Dr. Stephen Cina, a forensic pathology consultant, said. “So that certainly suggests that at least in that bag there’s a mixture of several substances present.”

Fuller is still in a Ugandan hospital in critical condition. Police were awaiting permission from Interpol to release her to go back to South Africa, and also to release Rice’s body to his family in South Africa.

“Ms. Fuller is slowly recovering, and when she is recovered enough we will be able to talk to her and find out more about what happened,” Uganda Police Force spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said. “She is not able to speak. Although she is responding to the treatment, she is not yet available to explain what transpired.”

Rice was a veteran producer who worked on the latest season of the hit reality-TV series The Amazing Race and the Emmy-nominated Animal Planet series Whale Wars.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION