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Princess Beatrice’s former boyfriend Paolo Liuzzo has died of a suspected drug overdose in a hotel in Miami.
Police were called to a room at the citizenM Miami Worldcenter hotel at 3.22pm on February 7, the Miami Police Department confirmed to The Independent on Wednesday.
Liuzzo’s time of death was reportedly given as 3.34pm that day, which in most cases reflects the time of the doctor or emergency service worker’s pronouncement.
The police investigation is still open and underway, but Liuzzo’s death – at the reported age of 41 – is being investigated as a drug overdose, police said.
The son of an Italian plastic resin tycoon, Mr Liuzzo’s romantic relationship with Princess Beatrice came to light in 2005 when the royal was 17 years old and he was 24, and he was invited by Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson to join the family on a skiing holiday to Verbier.
However, the couple reportedly parted ways a year later, after it emerged that he had been forced to return to the US for breaching the conditions of his probation for an assault conviction, which had been downgraded from a 2002 charge of manslaughter against a fellow student in Massachusetts.
His death certificate states that he had been working as an art industry consultant, The Sun reports, which reported that his body was flown back to his native Long Island for a funeral on 16 February.
Liuzzo had significant personal struggles and battled substance abuse issues that saw him repeatedly questioned by authorities over cocaine possession.
He also struggled under the weight of gambling debts.
A friend of the art consultant said: “Paolo was not doing great on a personal level. He loved to party and gamble.
“He began using a lot of pharmaceutical drugs but that later led to cocaine and harder drugs.
“It was a very fast lifestyle and we all feared it would catch up with him eventually.
“He was always borrowing money to pay loans. It became a vicious cycle.”
His death certificate reportedly listed him as living at an apartment not far from the hotel in downtown Miami where he is believed to have died.
News of the death comes amid a difficult time for Princess Beatrice, who has also had to contend with her mother’s cancer diagnosis.
Sarah Ferguson said in January that she had been diagnosed with a malignant melanoma just six months after undergoing surgery for breast cancer.
A friend told the Daily Mail in March that examinations had found no further spread of her melanoma and that the area it had been discovered initially was “all free of cancer”, but that she would be undergoing further checkups.
Ferguson is one of three members of the princess’s family currently battling the disease –with King Charles revealing his cancer diagnosis in January and Kate Middleton later revealing her’s in March.
