A police officer and his businesswoman wife died from heatstroke after getting into an overheated bathtub while drunk and high on cocaine, authorities in Brazil have said. The shocking deaths occurred as the couple celebrated their 4-year-old daughter’s birthday, turning a day of joy into tragedy. Military cop Jeferson Luiz Sagaz, 37, and his nail salon owner partner, Ana Carolina Silva, 41, were found dead in a motel in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina on the night of August 11, Brazilian outlet G1 Globo reported. The couple had spent the day celebrating their young daughter’s birthday, drinking alcohol and doing cocaine, before going to a nightclub and checking into a motel at around midnight. When they failed to pick up their daughter the following day, relatives raised the alarm and reported the pair missing. As per a report by The New York Post, their bodies were found in the motel bathtub. Authorities ruled that heatstroke was the cause of death, but that the cocaine and alcohol in their blood may have dulled their reactions to the severe heat. The water in the bathtub had reached 50 degrees, while a space heater in the room was also turned up high, investigators found. “The cause of both deaths was exogenous poisoning, favoring the process of heatstroke with intense dehydration, thermal collapse, culminating in organ failure and death,” Chief Medical Examiner Andressa Boer Fronza said Thursday. Traces of cocaine and very high blood alcohol levels were revealed in toxicology tests. “The use of cocaine, which in doses alone could cause torpor, drowsiness and even coma in the individual, combined with alcohol, which also causes this in high doses, such as torpor, coma and drowsiness,” Director of Forensic Medicine for the Scientific Police, Dr Fernando Oliva da Fonseca, told G1 Globo. “Add the two together, increasing the [risk] factor and that’s exactly what may have happened, the person goes into torpor at that temperature and it rises and they don’t feel it and don’t have a defense reaction,” the doctor said. Torpor is a state of physical dormancy similar to hibernation, where the body’s metabolic rate slows considerably. Further examination of the motel room, the couple’s car and security cameras was carried out, while Civil Police forensic reports were able to rule out carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning or electric shock, as well as anybody else being involved in their deaths. “These circumstances, combined with the substances found on the bodies, led the Civil Police to conclude that the cause of death was sudden and not due to third-party intervention,” Police Chief Felipe Simao Gomes said. Earlier, Carolina’s family issued a statement claiming she was not a drug user, and suggesting she was forced to consume cocaine and alcohol. The couple had been together for almost two decades and had no history of violence in the relationship, according to police.
