Cocaine may have caused death of Anguilla hotel worker who fought with UBS banker: revised autopsy
The Anguilla resort employee who died after a fight with a vacationing UBS banker in a hotel room was reportedly high out of his mind on cocaine.
The banker, Scott Hapgood, 44, of Darien, Connecticut, has been charged with manslaughter in the case. But, according to the New York Times, a revised autopsy report written by Dr. Stephen King on Sept. 3, says that the hotel worker, Kenny Mitchel, 27, had "acute cocaine toxicity [that] could have been a potentially independent cause of death in the known circumstance."
Scott Hapgood, right and his lawyer Juliya Arbisman hold a press conference, Aug. 20, 2019, (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
The report is the result of newly released toxicology tests, which indicate that Mitchel also had a blood alcohol level of 0.18, way above the legal limit in the U.S., and marijuana in his system as well.
Hapgood and his family have said all along that Mitchel, a stranger to them, appeared at the door of their luxury, five-star Malliouhana hotel room on April 13 and tried to rob them at knifepoint, sparking a brawl between Hapgood and Mitchel -- all in the presence of his frightened two young daughters. At the end of the fight, Mitchel was dead and Hapgood was badly injured. Hapgood and his family have called what happened to them while they were on vacation in the Carribean a "chilling nightmare" and "a literal fight to survive."
The attorneys for Hapgood asked Dr. David R. Fowler, the Maryland chief medical examiner, to give his expert analysis of the revised autopsy report. And Fowler determined that the amount of cocaine in Mitchel's body was "twice that commonly accepted to have a fatal outcome" and what led to him choking to death. Mitchel had more than double the amount of cocaine in him that can cause death.
"Mr. Mitchel has an exceptionally high cocaine level well into the accepted fatal range," Fowler wrote in a Sept. 5 report reviewed by FOX Business. "In my opinion, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the cause of death is acute cocaine intoxication complicated by cocaine-induced acute diffuse alveolar hemorrhage."
A coroner in Anguilla had initially determined that Mitchel had been suffocated to death.
The next hearing in the case is set for Nov. 11. Hapgood is currently out on $74,000 bail and back in the U.S, awaiting trial.