Officials on Wednesday confirmed the cause of death of Dax Tejera, the late executive producer of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner determined 37-year-old Tejera choked to death while intoxicated, reporting he suffered from “asphyxia due to obstruction of airway by food bolus complicating acute alcohol intoxication,” on the evening of Dec. 23, according to People Magazine. A memo released by ABC News President Kimberly Godwin previously attributed a heart attack as the cause of Tejera’s death.
Tejera is survived by his wife, Veronica, and their two daughters: 2-year-old Sofia and 7-month-old Ella.
Quick update for the record: Dax Tejera’s employer – @abcnews – was incorrect. Per his autopsy, he did not have a heart attack, he choked to death while drunk. Not a vaccine death, then.
So maybe only 999,999 excess deaths in the last year in the mRNA countries, not 1 million. https://t.co/ey3IN6Mlt0
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) February 9, 2023
The night of his death, authorities were notified about unattended children present at a hotel near Grand Central Station in New York City, where Tejera and his wife were staying, Entertainment Tonight (ET) reported. Police arrested Veronica for leaving the children alone, which she later said she regretted in a public statement. (RELATED: ABC News Producer Dies At Age 37)
“When Dax collapsed on December 23rd, I accompanied him in an ambulance to the hospital. I asked both a close friend and my parents to rush to my children’s hotel room to attend to them as I monitored them by camera. The hotel would not allow my friend in and instead called the NYPD,” the statement said, according to ET. “We had two cameras trained on my children as they slept, and I monitored them closely in the time I was away from them. While the girls were unharmed, I realize that it was a poor decision.”
“Our family has suffered a terrible tragedy. I respectfully ask for privacy while my children and I mourn Dax’s death,” she concluded.
Tejera had worked as a senior producer for ABC News based in Washington, D.C., since 2017. He produced “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” starting in 2020, just before the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before joining ABC, Tejera was a producer at MSNBC and an executive producer at ABC-Univision.