A Wellston man found dead last month outside Court Street Diner, 18 N. Court St., probably died of alcohol poisoning, according to an Athens County Coroner's report filed last week.
The body of Michael T. West, 44, was found at about 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 23, according to APD records. Athens police found him lying between a low cement wall and an exterior wall of Court Street Diner. Emergency medical personnel found no pulse and were unable to resuscitate him at the scene.
The coroner's report estimated West's time of death to be about 1 a.m. - an hour and a half before he was found.
The coroner's report stated that West's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was .254 at his time of death - a concentration it called critical.
The legal limit for intoxication in the state of Ohio is .08.
Athens County Coroner Dr. Scott Jenkinson said it would be hard to estimate exactly how much alcohol West could have consumed in order to reach such a high BAC because West's rate and time of drinking are unknown because of a lack of witnesses.
In this investigation there weren't people who said they were with him
so we don't have any good reliable info about what his activities were for the several hours before he was found Jenkinson said.
Terry Koons, assistant director of substance abuse education for Ohio University, said while it would be hard to estimate how much West would have had to consume to reach a BAC of .254, a BAC near .30 would bring an average 180-pound man to a near-comatose state, and could cause death. A BAC above .20 usually causes incapacitation, passing out and loss of control over one's body, Koons said.
Many factors can contribute to an individual's BAC, such as height, weight, age, rate and length of time a person has been drinking. Also, whether or not a meal was eaten prior to drinking can alter a person's BAC, Koons said.
Death by intoxication usually happens because somebody consumed so much alcohol in such a short period of time that their body couldn't process it out Koons said. Your body can only process out about a drink per hour.
The coroner's report also stated that alcohol was the only drug West ingested the night of his death. Jenkinson said that a wide range of tests for other drugs - both legal and illegal - came back negative.
-Emily Vance
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Emily Vance
