Trans woman found in D.C. park died of drug overdose: medical examiner
Transgender woman Skylar Harrison Reeves, 30, whose partially naked and uninjured body was found on a park bench in D.C.’s Marvin Gaye Park on Oct.
2, 2023, died from “toxicity” caused by the consumption of “cocaethylene, cocaine, and ethanol,” the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said in a Jan.
9 statement to the Washington Blade. The statement says the manner of Reeves’s death was ruled an “accident.” Rodney Adams, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office, said the term ethanol, which is a form of alcohol, when used in a cause of death statement like the one for Reeves, usually refers to an alcoholic beverage such as beer, wine, or liquor.
Online reports from medical experts obtained by the Blade, including a journal article from the National Institutes of Health, identify cocaethylene as a substance formed within the human body when a person consumes cocaine and an alcoholic beverage at the same time.
