New details are available regarding Douglas Kiker’s sudden passing.
A month after the American Idol alum—who competed on season 18 of the singing competition series—died at age 32, the City and County of Denver Medical Examiner’s report, obtained by E! News, has shared his cause of death was an opioid overdose.
The singer, who was also known as “The Singing Garbage Man,” died from a combination of fentanyl, methadone and amphetamines along with recent cocaine use, per the medical examiner. His death has been ruled an accident.
Kiker’s cause of death confirmation comes just over a month after his sister, Angela Evans, confirmed her family’s tragic loss on social media.
“It is with a heavy heart that we have to announce the passing of my brother Douglas Kiker,” Evans wrote in a March 12 Facebook post. “He was sooo loved and will be missed by so many!”
Later, Kiker’s mom Donna Kiker Carrillos-Ramirez also shared a post emphasizing her son was an “amazing” person.
“Today I got the call that no one wants to get,” she wrote in her own March 12 post. “He had the biggest smile and knew how to make you laugh.”
Carrillos-Ramirez noted that while her son was primarily raised by his grandparents, she “never stopped loving him.” As she put it in a note directly to her late son, “You will forever be missed.”
During his 2020 American Idol audition, Kiker shared that he was pursuing his singing talent seriously to act as an example to his daughter, whom he shared as well as one other child, with ex fiancée Valerie Cook.
As he noted, “I’m trying to show her that if you put your mind to it, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
And Katy Perry was particularly touched by Kiker’s rendition of “Bless the Broken Road” by The Rascal Flats.
“You just stay where you are and you’re gonna go far,” she told him after the judges sent him through to Hollywood. “And you’re gonna take your daughter with you to all the highest heights.”
