The Brazilian passenger who died on board an Aer Lingus flight after suffering a violent seizure and collapsing was found to have been carrying about two pounds of cocaine in his stomach.
The passenger, identified as John Kennedy Santos Gurjao, 25, had ingested 0.8 kg of the drug in a total of 80 small packages, one of which burst open inside his stomach during the Aer Lingus flight from Lisbon to Dublin on Sunday, Assistant State Pathologist Dr. Margot Bolster confirmed in a postmortem, according to The Irish Times.
A postmortem examination is being conducted in order to confirm that the young man died due to poisoning from the cocaine, which had a street value of about $63,000.
Gurjao started acting violently halfway through the two-hour Aer Lingus flight on Sunday. When another passenger tried to restrain him, he bit the person on the arm before suffering a seizure and collapsing, prompting the pilot to divert the plane to Cork airport, where paramedics pronounced him dead, as HNGN previously reported.
A 44-year-old Portugese woman, who was travelling with Gurjao, was held on suspicion of drug trafficking, but the white powder found in her baggage was identified as flour used to bake Brazilian bread, according to the New York Daily News.
