Controversial YouTuber Kevin Samuels built his career telling Black women they were overweight and would die alone and with high blood pressure. Now, as his cause of death is revealed, some can’t help but note the irony. According to an autopsy, Samuels died of hypertension.
According to his autopsy report obtained by E! News, he died of natural causes related to hypertension. Atenolol, a drug used to treat hypertension, was found in his system, TMZ reported.
Samuels died on May 5 at his Atlanta, Georgia home. He was with a woman he met earlier that night, 32-year-old Ortensia Alcantara. After Samuels’ collapsed, she called 911. She told 911 operators that she was a nurse and administered CPR to Samuels after he turned blue. Since she had just met Samuels, she didn’t know what address to tell the 911 operators. During the 18-minute call, Alcantara became frantic due feeling they weren’t acting urgently enough.
“I’m not going to stop giving him CPR,” she said to the operator. “Ask the front f****** desk.”
You could hear her desperate cries as performed CPR and tried to save Samuels.
The 57-year-old social media personality was rushed to Piedmont Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
Samuels’ mother, Beverly Samuels-Burch, found out about his death via social media.
”That was a terrible thing for social media to put that out,” she told NBC News. “I didn’t even know. I hadn’t even been notified. All I’m doing is requesting that people pray for us.”
Samuels built his platform on telling Black women, especially single mothers, that they were going to die alone and that they weren’t beautiful. He would give them low ratings regarding their looks and tell them they were overweight and destined to have health issues like high blood pressure.
Hypertension is often called the ‘silent killer’ in the medical community because it does not always have symptoms and therefore can be hard to detect. According to the American Heart Association, about 55% of Black adults have high blood pressure. Black people also have disproportionately high rates of more severe HBP and it develops earlier in life. Lack of access to care, lack of access to healthy foods, and other societal issues play a huge factor in the disproportionate rates of hypertension among Black people.
Samuels’ death was just as controversial as his YouTube content. Some mourned, others expressed “relief” without rejoicing at the loss of human life, and some just flat-out celebrated his passing. His polarizing views during life had a huge effect on how people handled his death. They also questioned his bank account and wondered if Samuels really lived the “high value” lifestyle he preached.
Samuels garnered over 1.2 million followers on Instagram and 1.45 million subscribers on YouTube. But when it was revealed that he lived in a relatively affordable luxury rental apartment in Atlanta, pundits and bloggers began to question his net worth.
Houston attorney, Dennis Spurling, took to youtube to defend his late friend, calling the rumors that Samuels was broke, a flat-out lie and that he actually died, ‘rich AF.’