Posted on 11/20/2003 6:22:09 AM PST by Arrowhead1952
Officers had arrived to help him fix a flat tire
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, November 20, 2003
FORT WORTH -- A man changing a flat tire choked to death on a bag of marijuana he stuffed down his throat in an apparent attempt to hide it from police who stopped to help him early Wednesday.
Cpl. Frank Lott of the Corinth Police Department said officers had no idea Nickolas Sandoval, 24, of Ponder had drugs when they spotted him on Interstate 35E in Corinth, about 45 miles northeast of Fort Worth.
"Officers went from `Oh, hey, here is someone with a flat tire' to `Hey, this guy is choking,' " Lott told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for its online edition Wednesday.
Officers noticed a plastic bag lodged in the man's throat, but it was too far down for them to extract. They kept trying to dislodge it until an ambulance arrived, and medical personnel were able to remove it, Lott said.
Sandoval was pronounced dead at Denton Regional Medical Center about 3:30 a.m., said Linda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. The cause of death has been ruled as "asphyxiation due to aspiration of plastic bag," she said.
Sandoval had been convicted in Denton County of multiple counts of marijuana possession, a Class B misdemeanor, between September 1999 and December 2001, court records show. He pleaded guilty to the charge in September 1999 and received a deferred adjudication sentence after 12 months of probation.
In August 2000, he pleaded no contest to another marijuana possession charge and was sentenced to 40 days in jail. In December 2001, he was convicted of possession of marijuana and sentenced to 95 days in jail.
Was he stoned when he attempted this clever manuever?
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