Kansas City Chiefs fans' deaths: Drugs, freezing weather could have created lethal conditions, experts say

 As their families await toxicology results to shed more light on the mysterious deaths of three Kansas City Chiefs fans, experts tell Fox News Digital that a mix of drugs and cold weather could have dealt all three the fatal blow. Is.

The bodies of Ricky Johnson, 38, Clayton McGeeney, 36, and David Harrington, 37, were found on January 9, two days after they gathered at the home of friend Jordan Willis to watch the Chiefs play the Los Angeles Chargers.

The Kansas City Police Department told Fox News Digital that no foul play is suspected and "this case is 100% not being investigated as a homicide."

The men's families have accused Willis of playing an active role in the deaths, including allegations that he was drugged.

The family cites Willis' attorney's varying story about the friends' final hours, claiming that his client slept on his couch for most of the 48 hours that his friends died in his backyard and that a doctor with a Ph.D. His role as a "brilliant scientist". D. Working at a non-profit organization developing vaccinations.

However, experts who spoke to Fox News Digital believed the deaths were likely accidental and caused by recreational drug use, which was too strange.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden said, "If they all drank alcohol, they wouldn't collapse at the same time. People react differently to large doses of alcohol, metabolizing it at different speeds." “They react to it, but they don't react immediately, [and] they're so conscious that if they think they're going to faint they go indoors.

"It would be the kind of drug that would disorient a person," Baden said, dismissing carbon monoxide as the men's bodies were found outside. “Fentanyl-type drugs can cause disorientation and can lead to rapid sleep-like loss of consciousness.

"If these four people take it together, the person sitting on the sofa will take it for a long time, while the three people who went out disorganized probably did not wear their coats. Because of the cold weather, it [It may have been] a combination of drugs and hypothermia that caused his death."

Death from an overdose of fentanyl or fentanyl analogs, versions of the drug with a similar but slightly different chemical structure, does not occur immediately, Baden said, and can take about an hour. When a fentanyl overdose occurs, naloxone can prevent users from slipping into a coma after losing consciousness.

"This is not a sudden death within minutes," he said.

But hypothermia begins when the body's internal temperature drops to 95 degrees or less. Although the temperature in Kansas City on the evening of January 7 was not particularly low, with a low of about 29 degrees, Baden said that being in the snow for a long time in any weather below 32 degrees was "enough to kill a man." Will be "cold". ,

"When they fall through the snow they probably don't die, but the cold causes them to go into a deep coma and die from hypothermia," Baden said. "If they had gotten home OK they wouldn't have died. But if they had been in the snow, they would have died in the snow. They wouldn't have felt any pain or anything. They wouldn't have woken up in time."

Baden said the theory that all four men had consumed a drug laced with fentanyl would support Willis's claim that he slept for all or most of two days after coming to his friends' house.

Powdered fentanyl can be mixed with drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine or pressed into pills that look like prescription opioids. Police in Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana and New York have reported finding synthetic opioids in marijuana.

Two of the three bereaved families told Fox News that digital spies had reached out demanding passcodes to their sons' phones. Attorney and retired NYPD Inspector Paul Mauro said that in all likelihood the Kansas City Police Department was trying to determine whether drugs were sold or given to any individual and set up a chain of possession. That process could further delay the investigation.

Although Willis is not facing criminal charges and police have not accused him of any wrongdoing, he could be charged with drug-induced murder or manslaughter if he is found to be the supplier of the deadly drugs. , so said all the experts.

Mauro said, "I think now they have to try to jailbreak the phone [if they can't get the password] which is very difficult to do these days." "Most of these phones... a lot of data is defaulted to the cloud. You can get a cloud search warrant. Instead of a password, you won't be able to get in with a thumb print.

"The person needs to survive. If you're not alive, you don't have the heat or electricity you need. There are some workarounds, but the bottom line is, they're not going to do it if they don't have the password." “It will be a lot of fun to get in there.”

Retired DEA Special Agent Derek Maltz said that although the deaths of McGinty, Johnson and Harrington have generated interest across the country, the phenomenon of mass overdose deaths is more common than one might think.

In a presentation before the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security in 2023, Maltz was able to compile 70 pages of news articles from 2023 on the deaths of three or more victims, and in some as many as 10 or 20, whose deaths occurred at once. Had died in. From medication – sometimes thinking it is a "safe" substance, and sometimes through innocuous items like lollipops.

"This is happening in every state," Maltz told Fox News Digital. "Everyone is focused on 'Three people died, they were frozen in the backyard.' But they don't know that this is happening every day in many states across the country. People are not keeping it together. The news is just reacting to things instead of understanding what is actually happening. This is where Where it gets really sad to me. The more we talk about it, it's just that people continue to die."

Although he stressed that this was just a theory, Maltz said he thought the Kansas City tragedy was "a clear case of cocaine laced with fentanyl."

However, he said, other drugs can cause fast-acting, disorienting effects, including synthetic opioids such as nitazane and the horse tranquilizer xylazine, which he said are being produced in Chinese laboratories.

"They may not have the capacity. I hope they have the means to say, 'Our lab can't do this,'" Mauro said. "I hope the police are thinking that way. If they just test for heroin, and it's synthetic, it won't show up. I hope they know how to test for it."

Mauro also theorized that K2 or "Spice", a synthetic marijuana that is sometimes offered as the real thing or used by people who want to avoid positive marijuana results on drug tests, is objectionable. substance can be

K2 often causes hyperthermia, a dramatic increase in body temperature. MDMA, cocaine, and amphetamines can also cause users to overheat.

Mauro said, "If I had to bet my pension, they were drinking. They were smoking marijuana. There was K2 mixed in the weed. They got too hot and threw themselves in the snow." "Let's say he went out to get a cigarette or something. It doesn't matter how drunk you are – it affects you in that area."