Fresh details have emerged following the shock death of Australian cricket legend and the greatest leg-spinner of all-time, Shane Warne, aged 52.
Warne’s long-time manager told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the cricket star was found unresponsive in his hotel room at a resort in Koh Samui, Thailand by his friend Andrew Neophitou.
Neophitou, who was also an executive producer on Warne’s recently released documentary, went to check on the cricketer prior to a planned dinner and “realised he wasn’t well.”
“[Neophitou] tried to give mouth-to-mouth, tried to resuscitate him, he had no heartbeat, the ambulance came 20 minutes later and an hour and a bit later he was pronounced dead [at the Thai International Hospital],” Warne’s manager, James Erskine, told the newspapers.
Paramedic Anuch Han-iam, who was one of the first on the scene, added that when he arrived Warne’s friends “were desperate.”
“I think one was crying. They were really stressed and panicked. They kept trying to wake him and I heard someone saying, ‘Come on, Shane. Come on, Shane’,” Han-iam told The Herald Sun.
Warne is said to have suffered a massive heart attack.
His friends, including Neophitou, accompanied his body on a ferry to Surat Thani Hospital on the Thai mainland on Sunday.
Warne’s family gave the green light for an autopsy to be conducted in Thailand rather than waiting until he returned to Australia.
Warne’s body is expected to return home to Australia on Tuesday ahead of a State Funeral in Victoria.
