[Blaze] A man who died shortly after his guilty verdict was read inside a Texas courtroom last year committed suicide by consuming a toxic level of a common food preservative, a new report says.On August 11, 2022, 57-year-old Edward Leclair was standing inside a courtroom in Denton, Texas. He was on trial for five counts of child sexual abuse. After just three and a half hours of deliberation, the jury had settled on a verdict: guilty. As the judge read the verdict, Leclair reportedly began to "chug" what appeared to be a "cloudy" liquid inside a water bottle.
Moments later, the bailiff found Leclair unconscious in his holding cell. Leclair was quickly rushed to the Medical City Denton hospital, where he was pronounced dead just before 3 p.m. that same day.
Now, a new report from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office has determined a cause of death. The "cloudy" liquid Leclair drank turned out to be sodium nitrite partially dissolved in water. Though sodium nitrite is a fairly common substance, often used as a food preservative for meat, large quantities of it can cause low blood pressure and limit the flow of oxygen throughout the body.
| And nitrites become nitrosamines, a known carcinogen. Not that he need worry about it any longer. |