Chicago lottery winner died from cyanide poisoning
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| This undated photo provided by the Illinois Lottery shows Urooj Khan, 46, of Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood, posing with a winning lottery ticket. The Cook County medical examiner said Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, that Khan was fatally poisoned with cyanide July 20, 2012, a day after he collected nearly $425,000 in lottery winnings. |
CHICAGO (AP)
-- With no signs of trauma and nothing to raise suspicions, the sudden
death of a Chicago man just as he was about to collect nearly $425,000
in lottery winnings was initially ruled a result of natural causes.
Nearly
six months later, authorities have a mystery on their hands after
medical examiners, responding to a relative's pleas, did an expanded
screening and determined that Urooj Khan, 46, died shortly after
ingesting a lethal dose of cyanide. The finding has triggered a homicide
investigation, the Chicago Police Department said Monday.
"It's
pretty unusual," said Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina,
commenting on the rarity of cyanide poisonings. "I've had one, maybe two
cases out of 4,500 autopsies I've done."
In
June, Khan, who owned a number of dry cleaners, stopped in at a 7-Eleven
near his home in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the city's North
Side and bought a ticket for an instant lottery game.
Convenience
store clerk Ashur Oshana told The Associated Press on Monday that Khan
had just gone on a hajj, a Muslim pilgrimage, in Saudi Arabia and wanted
to lead a better life and not gamble. But Khan bought the tickets
anyway and scratched off the winner in front of Oshana.
"Right away he grabbed my hand," Oshana said. "He kissed my hand and kissed my head and gave me $100. He was really happy."
Khan
recalled days later at an Illinois Lottery ceremony in which he was
presented with an oversized check that he jumped up and down in the
store and repeatedly shouted, "I hit a million!"
"Winning
the lottery means everything to me," he said at the June 26 ceremony,
also attended by his wife, Shabana Ansari; their daughter, Jasmeen Khan;
and several friends. He said he would put some of his winnings into his
businesses and donate some to a children's hospital.
Instead
of the full $1 million over installments, Khan opted to take his
winnings in a lump sum of just over $600,000. After taxes, the winnings
amounted to about $425,000, said lottery spokesman Mike Lang. The check
was issued from the state Comptroller's Office on July 19, the day
before Khan died, but was cashed on Aug. 15, Lang said. If a lottery
winner dies, the money typically goes to his or her estate, Lang said.
Khan
was pronounced dead July 20 at a hospital, but Cina would not say where
Khan was when he fell ill, citing the ongoing investigation.
No
signs of trauma were found on Khan's body during an external exam and
no autopsy was done because, at the time, the Cook County Medical
Examiner's Office didn't generally perform them on those 45 and older
unless the death was suspicious, Cina said. The cutoff age has since
been raised to age 50.
A basic toxicology
screening for opiates, cocaine and carbon monoxide came back negative,
and the death was ruled a result of the narrowing and hardening of
coronary arteries.
Cyanide can get into the
body by being inhaled, swallowed or injected. Deborah Blum, an expert on
poisons who has written about the detectives who pioneered forensic
toxicology, said the use of cyanide in killings has become rare in part
because it is difficult to obtain and normally easy to detect, often
leaving blue splotches on a victim's skin.
"The
thing about it is that it's not one of those poisons that's tasteless,"
Blum said. "It has a really strong, bitter taste, so you would know you
had swallowed something bad if you had swallowed cyanide. But if you
had a high enough dose it wouldn't matter, because ... a good lethal
does will take you out in less than five minutes."
Only
a small amount of fine, white cyanide powder can be deadly, she said,
as it disrupts the ability of cells to transport oxygen around the body,
causing a convulsive, violent death.
"It essentially kills you in this explosion of cell death," she said. "You feel like you're suffocating."
A
relative came forward days after the initial cause of death was
released and asked authorities to look into the case further, Cina said.
He refused to identify the relative.
"She
(the morgue worker) then reopened the case and did more expansive
toxicology, including all the major drugs of use, all the common
prescription drugs and also included I believe strychnine and cyanide in
there just in case something came up," Cina said. "And in fact cyanide
came up in this case."
The full results came
back in November. Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Melissa Stratton
confirmed the department was now investigating the death and said
detectives were working closely with the Medical Examiner's Office.
Investigators will likely exhume the body, Cina said.
Calls
to Khan's family went unanswered Monday. A knock on the door at the
family's small, two-story house late Monday afternoon wasn't answered.
