March 3, 2012
The Los Angeles County coroner's office said it is awaiting the results of toxicology tests before releasing an official cause of death for conservative author and activist Andrew Breitbart, who died unexpectedly Thursday at age 43.
A source familiar with the investigation told The Times the tests are routine in a death of someone so young.
An autopsy was completed Friday, and the tests are expected to take several weeks.
"It's standard procedure," coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey told Reuters. "We have a very young man who died suddenly and unexpectedly, so we want to make sure we cover all the bases."
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was still under investigation, said officials are working on the assumption that Breitbart died of natural causes. A witness saw him collapse while walking near his home and said that he had no external injuries, the source said. Paramedics rushed Breitbart to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where doctors pronounced him dead.
"It looks like a heart attack, but no one knows until "an autopsy is done, Breitbart's father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, told The Times.
"He was walking near the house somewhere.... He was taken by paramedics to UCLA, and they couldn't revive him," Bean said. "We're devastated. I loved him like a son."
Breitbart is survived by his wife, Susannah; four children; his parents; and a sister. The family has not announced memorial arrangements.
Sources said officials will also try to determine whether Breitbart had any underlying health problems that could have contributed to his death, a common tack in such cases.
Breitbart was a Hollywood-criticizing, mainstream-media-loathing conservative and shot to stardom with two stories in recent years: breaking the story over sexually charged tweets by former Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York, a scandal that led to his resignation; and posting a video of Shirley Sherrod, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in which she appeared to make racially charged comments, leading to her firing and then a subsequent apology by the Obama administration when it was later revealed that the video had been heavily edited and her comments portrayed out of context.
Sherrod released a statement saying: "My prayers go out to Mr. Breitbart's family as they cope during this very difficult time. I do not intend to make any further comments."
Breitbart spent his early professional years helping to edit the Drudge Report and later helped launch the Huffington Post. In 2005, he started his news aggregation site Breitbart.com, which was designed to counter what he described as the "bully media cabal" that he said ignores stories at odds with prevailing liberal orthodoxy. His goal, he often said, was to "destroy the institutional left."
His big splash came in 2009, when he posted an undercover video in which a pair of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend asked employees of the community group ACORN for help with a brothel that would house underage Salvadorans. ACORN was embarrassed when some of its workers seemed too helpful; Congress responded by defunding the organization.
Breitbart's mother-in-law, Alison Mills Bean, called him "one of the most genuine people I’ve met in my life.... He always spoke the truth of his heart, and no matter what people agreed or disagreed with him he never wavered.
"And he was loved by a lot of people," she said. "And I know a lot of people found fault with his points of view ... but everyone loved him. It is a great loss for everybody."There was no stopping Andrew Breitbart from fighting the good fight with every fiber of his soul," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) said in Congress. "Goodbye and God bless, Brother Andrew. You are loved and mourned and ever remembered."
Breitbart lived with his family in Westwood. He had been adopted by moderately conservative Jewish parents and attended two of L.A.'s most exclusive private schools -- Carlthorp and Brentwood.
His father, Gerald, owned Fox and Hounds, a landmark Tudor-style Santa Monica restaurant that later became the punk rock club Madame Wong's West. His mother, Arlene, was an executive at Bank of America in Beverly Hills and downtown L.A.
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