A Chicago man had some good news and some bad news. The good news is that he won the million dollar instant lottery. The bad news is that he died of cyanide poisoning not even a day after collecting the winnings.
The Cook County medical examiner has concluded that the winner of the instant lottery died of cyanide poisoning one day later, rather than by natural causes as originally ruled. Urooj Khan, 46, literally jumped for joy last June after realizing that one of the tickets he had bought at 7-11 was worth $1 million.
Khan returned to the store, with his wife and teenager daughter by his side, to collect his post-tax winnings. He had said that he planned to use it to expand his dry-cleaning business, says USA Today .
Nearly six months later, authorities have uncovered a whole new mystery after medical examiners did an expansive screening and determined that Khan had ingested cyanide. The results have triggered a homicide investigation, the Chicago Police Department said.
Medical examiner Stephen Cina, commented on the rarity of cyanide poisonings:
“It’s pretty unusual. I’ve had one, maybe two cases out of 4,500 autopsies I’ve done.”
According to the Star Tribune , no signs of trauma were found during an external exam and no autopsy was done because unless the death was suspicious, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t automatically perform them on those 45 and older. The cut-off has now been raised to age 50.
Cina added:
“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. And in fact cyanide came up in this case.”
The investigation has been reopened, and all thanks to a relative who insisted Khan’s death wasn’t of natural causes.