First pot death?

[\/\/illy]

Darwin award contestant?

[Guest Low Roller]

I'm with Willy. This guy needs to be nominated for a Darwin Award.

[Velvet]

Man dies trying to swallow marijuana

By Ben Tinsley

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Nickolas Sandoval was apparently trying to hide the drugs.

A 24-year-old Ponder man choked to death on a bag of marijuana he stuffed down his throat in an apparent attempt to hide it from Corinth police officers early Wednesday.

Officers said they had no idea Nickolas Sandoval was in possession of drugs when they stopped about 2:30 a.m. to help him fix a flat tire in the 5900 block of northbound Interstate 35E in Corinth, Cpl. Frank Lott said.

"It started out as a welfare concern. It looked like he was attempting to change his tire on his Ford Ranger," Lott said. "But then he started doing the entire choking, grabbing throat, kind of thing. ... Officers went from 'Oh, hey, here is someone with a flat tire,' to 'Hey, this guy is choking.' "

Officers noticed a plastic bag lodged in the man's throat, but it was too far down for them to extract.

"The ambulance arrived and they had to use some kind of medical tool," Lott said. "The officers had worked on him using the Heimlich [maneuver] until the EMS arrived and took over. EMS removed the lodged article, and he was taken to the hospital."

Sandoval was pronounced dead in the emergency room of 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 served a year 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 sentenced to 95 days in jail for marijuana possession.

Also in December 2001, he pleaded guilty to a Class B misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated and was sentenced to another 95 days in jail.

Neither Denton attorney Cary Piel, who represented Sandoval in 2001, nor Denton attorney Steven T. Burgess, who represented Sandoval in 1999 and 2000, could recall much about his cases.

Calls to Sandoval's family were not returned Wednesday.

Corinth authorities are trying to piece together details of the incident. They hadn't determined the amount of marijuana by late Wednesday, but Lott said it was a "sizable amount." The bag was the "standard lunch-bag type," he said.

"This was a weird situation, especially considering he wasn't being stopped by us in the first place," Lott said. "I don't even think he would have been questioned by us."