Joe Jackson: 'I have a lot of concerns'

LOS ANGELES, June 28 (UPI) -- Pop icon Michael Jackson's father said in Los Angeles Sunday he has "a lot of concerns" about the way his son died but he declined to discuss them in detail.

Speaking on CNN as he arrived at the BET Awards, Joe Jackson called his son -- who died Thursday at age 50 -- "the greatest star in the world."

"I wish the world had recognized him when he were living," Joe Jackson said. "Right now he's bigger than ever."

After a publicist for the Jackson family read a statement during Joe Jackson's appearance indicating the family would speak from this point on only through its attorney, Joe Jackson was asked whether he had concerns about the circumstances surrounding his son's death.

"I have a lot of concerns but I can't get into that," he said. "I don't like what happened."

A lawyer for Michael Jackson's doctor said Sunday reports the doctor injected the pop icon with a powerful painkiller just before Jackson died are "absolutely false."

"There was no Demerol. No OxyContin," Edward Chernoff, who represents Dr. Conrad Murray, told the Los Angeles Times.

Chernoff, a criminal defense attorney based in Houston, was present during Murray's three-hour interview Saturday with Los Angeles police investigators, the Times reported Sunday. He told the newspaper the entertainer was unconscious and not breathing Thursday when Murray "fortuitously" entered the bedroom at the Holmby Hills mansion Jackson was renting as he prepared for a series of 50 concerts in London, scheduled to begin next month.

"He checked for a pulse," Chernoff said. "There was a weak pulse in his femoral artery. He started administering CPR."

At the BET Awards, host Jamie Foxx wore a red leather jacket suggestive of Michael Jackson's costume in the video for "Billie Jean" and punctuated his opening monologue with his version of Michael Jackson's moonwalk dance step.