Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 12/99) - A report from the Coroner's Office has revealed the cause of three of the four mysterious deaths that took place in Yellowknife late last year.

Chief Coroner Percy Kinney said not all the men died of cocaine overdoses as was originally suspected.

Ernie Vandemeer, 55, of Yellowknife died as a result of a deadly drug mixture of alcohol, heroin and cocaine, Kinney said.

"Acute ethanol, opiate and cocaine toxicity," Kinney said, adding, the opiate detected in the test was at least partly heroin.

"Heroin itself is not detectable in the blood, because it is rapidly converted to morphine shortly after it is taken in the blood." he said. "The finding of a certain drug detected in the urine was an indication that some or all of the morphine detected was a result of heroin usage."

Kinney explained the death of Hai Lee Lam, 35, was a direct result of an overdose of cough medication.

"Lam was a weird one, actually," Kinney said. "We did find small amounts of cocaine on board, but we found a high level of diphenhydramine, which is an antihistamine which is a component of several over-the-counter cold remedies."

Although cocaine was detected, Kinney said it was the cough medicine that killed Lam.

"We found some drugs associated with the cough medicine and some cocaine was detected," he said.

"The concentration of cocaine indicates recent use, but that insufficient amounts remained at the time of death to have caused significant toxicity."

"He did ingest enough of that chemical (diphenhydramine) to kill himself," Kinney said.

The chemical is present in several over-the-counter medicines, that can prove harmful if abused, Kinney said.

"Benylin DM is one example of a cough medication that has this drug in it," he said.

"Over the counter medicines are fine if they're used as they're supposed to be, but if you abuse anything, you will cause death."

Kinney said the Dec. 7 death of David Tagoona, 51, was quite simply heart failure through a hardening of the arteries. Results are still not back from tests performed on Randolph Stephen Olynuk, he said.

"Olynyk, we don't know," Kinney said. "We're still waiting for the final results, although it doesn't look like cocaine was a factor, but we'll see."