Prince's Friend Recalls Airplane Incident Days Before His Death

— -- Singer Judith Hill was one of two people with Prince on April 15 when the late Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's plane had to make an emergency landing because he had lost consciousness.

Now she's telling her story of that night to The New York Times.

"His eyes just fixed," the former "Voice" contestant and Prince protege told The Times. She was dining with Prince on the private plane, talking about music and the solo concert Prince had just finished in Atlanta when he lost consciousness. "Thankfully, I happened to be looking into his face."

Hill said she and the other passenger, Prince's aide, Kirk Johnson, unsuccessfully tried to rouse the singer.

"We knew it was only a matter of time; we had to get down," she said. "We didn't have anything on the plane to help him."

The plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, where paramedics administered a shot of Narcan, a medicine used to treat opioid overdoses, according to The New York Times. By the time the trio reached the hospital, Hill said, Prince was awake and talking.

Hill added that Prince wanted to leave the hospital but agreed to stay overnight with Hill and Johnson by his side.

“He was very cooperative that whole night,” she said, “serious about getting help.”

In fact, Hill says, after the airplane incident Prince went to a local doctor for tests.

"He did it because he was concerned and he wanted to do the right thing for his own body," she said, noting like others close to the singer, that before the airplane incident she had no knowledge of his problems. "And that's the part that breaks my heart, because he was trying. He was trying."

Prince died less than a week after the ill-fated plane ride, on April 21, from an overdose of the painkiller fentanyl.