Los Angeles - A massive public memorial for Michael Jackson
is to take place at the Staples Centre in downtown Los Angeles on
Tuesday, his concert promoter Randy Phillips said Thursday.
Broadcaster CNN showed footage Thursday of a dancing, singing
Jackson at the same venue on his last rehearsal the night before he
died. The video corroborated prior comments from numerous people who
had been present and said that Jackson appeared healthy and engaged
before his death, and was fit to go ahead with his planned 50-concert
comeback engagement in London.
Phillips, the president and CEO of AEG, said the service will
begin at 10 am (1700 GMT) at the 20,000-capacity Staples Centre with
live images screened on widescreen televisions for an overflow crowd
expected to gather in the plaza outside the huge basketball stadium
and convention centre.
'Details are still to be finalized when I meet with the Jackson
family this afternoon,' Philips said on local TV station KNBC.
'Everything is in preliminary stages except the place and time.'
The station also reported that Jackson's former wife Debbie Rowe,
who is the mother of his two older children, would seek custody. 'I
want my children,' she said.
Rowe also said that she would seek a restraining order to keep
Jackson's father Joe, whom the pop star claimed had abused him as a
child, away from her children.
In Jackson's will, he appointed his mother Katherine, 79, as the
guardian of his children, with soul diva Diana Ross tapped as an
alternate.
Plans to hold the memorial at Jackson's home in Neverland had to
be cancelled because of the difficulties expected in dealing with
thousands of fans in the remote region. But Jackson's brother
Jermaine told the Today Show Thursday that the family still hoped to
make the fantasy-like refuge his final resting place once permits
were obtained.
Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) joined the
investigation into Jackson's death following evidence that the singer
had desperately sought the powerful sedative Diprivan days before his
death from cardiac arrest on June 25. The drug is used in hospitals
as an anaesthetic.
Jermaine said the family has been deeply hurt by speculation that
an overdose of prescription drugs may have caused Jackson's death.
'For people to come forward to say things they don't have the facts
(to back up) is very damaging for the family, to me, to us. Because
we don't know,' he said in the interview, conducted at Neverland.
USA
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