In an official coroner’s report Saturday, cocaine was found in director Ted Demme‘s system and may have been a contributing factor to his death from a heart attack while playing a charity basketball game in Santa Monica, Calif. on Jan. 13.
Apparently the 38-year-old director had thickened heart arteries and died when a blood clot formed in a heart vessel, according to the report. The small amount of cocaine in his body may have been the last straw in causing the fatal heart attack.
The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Lt. Erick Arbuthnot has ruled Demme‘s death as accidental.
Demme was the nephew of director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) and directed last year’s Blow, starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.
His wife Amanda Scheer-Demme, and the couple’s two young children survive Demme.
