Basketball And Cocaine A Deadly Combo For Ted Demme

Posted Monday, February 4, 2002 at 1:04 PM Central

by Heather Koehler

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office autopsy found a small amount of cocaine in Ted Demme’s body, which doctors say triggered the heart attack that killed the young director during a charity basketball game on January 13th.

The official cause of death is listed as heart attack with coronary artery disease listed as a contributing factor, but the metabolized amount of cocaine in his system mixed with the vigorous activity could have contributed to the heart attack.

In a sad coincidence, Ted was best known for Blow, a movie starring Johnny Depp as the drug lord George Jung, who built the U.S. cocaine market in the seventies.