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Heart attack and acute mixed drug ingestion said to be cause of death.

Andy Irons, a three-time world surfing champion from Hawaii, who died at 32 in a hotel room last November, succumbed to a combination of a heart attack and drugs in his system, according to an autopsy report.

The presence of drugs confirmed rumors that dogged Irons during his surfing career. After winning championships from 2002 through 2004, and cementing his reputation as one of the greatest competitive surfers, Irons baffled the surfing world with erratic behavior. He abruptly quit the 2008 tour, and sat out the 2009 season before making a comeback in 2010.

The autopsy, provided to The New York Times on Wednesday by a publicist for Irons’s family, lists the primary cause of death as a heart attack related to coronary artery disease. The secondary cause is “acute mixed drug ingestion.”

Irons was found in his hotel room in Texas. In the room, the police discovered prescription bottles for Alprazolam, used to treat anxiety, and Zolpidem, a sleep aid, along with tablets containing methadone, a narcotic used to treat pain and opiate addiction. Toxicology tests showed Irons also had cocaine and methamphetamine in his system.

The autopsy report was prepared by the Tarrant County (Tex.) Medical Examiner’s office and will not be made public until June 20.

“Our office is still enjoined from releasing any information about this case,” a spokesman for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office said in an e-mail.

The Irons family hired its own medical examiners to review the report — one of whom disputed whether drugs contributed to Irons’s death. Yet it said it would not contest the medical examiner’s findings, and said Irons had long suffered from mood disorders and drug abuse.

read more at nytimes

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Irons’ Family Statement
June 8th, 2011

TO: MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA
FROM: THE FAMILY OF ANDY IRONS

RE: OFFICIAL IRONS FAMILY STATEMENT REGARDING ANDY IRONS AUTOPSY AND TOXICOLOGY REPORT

We have received the final autopsy and toxicology report filed in connection with Andy’s death on November 2nd, 2010, from the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office in Forth Worth, TX.

The family apologizes for the delay in the release of this information. The injunction filed last December was to allow Andy’s widow, Lyndie, who was then eight months pregnant with Andy’s son, Andy Axel Irons, to give birth in peace. Please understand that this decision meant that the family did not learn the cause of Andy’s death until May 20th, and only after a second delay was requested by an attorney in Dallas, without the family’s knowledge or consent, to provide time for the 13-page toxicology report to be interpreted by two independent forensic experts – a process that took several weeks, but also enabled the family to fully come to terms with the unexpected root cause of Andy’s death.

The autopsy concludes that Andy died a natural death from a sudden cardiac arrest due to a severe blockage of a main artery of the heart. Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a prominent forensic pathologist in San Antonio, TX, who has consulted on many high-profile cases, was asked to review and explain the autopsy results to the family. He states: “This is a very straightforward case. Mr. Irons died of a heart attack due to focal severe coronary atherosclerosis, i.e., ‘hardening of the arteries.’ He had an atherosclerotic plaque producing 70%-80% narrowing of his anterior descending coronary artery.This is very severe narrowing. A plaque of this severity, located in the anterior descending coronary artery, is commonly associated with sudden death.”

read more at surfermag