A Texas man 'chugged' a bottle of 'cloudy' liquid in court right as a judge read the verdict for his child sexual abuse conviction
- Edward Leclair was spotted chugging a "cloudy" liquid as a judge convicted him of child sexual abuse.
- The 57-year-old man from Texas died just hours after his conviction.
A Texas man on Thursday reportedly died after downing a "cloudy" liquid right as a judge convicted him of child sexual abuse.
Edward Leclair, 57, sat through nearly 4 hours of deliberation, taking swigs from a clear container the whole time. By the time the judge read the verdict — convicting him on five counts of child sexual abuse related to a June 2016 incident — he had "chugged" the whole bottle, according to Denton County Assistant District Attorney Jamie Beck.
"Our investigator noticed him chug the water," Beck said in an interview with CNN. "He told the bailiff he might want to go check on him."
After the verdict was read, Leclair had been placed in a holding cell, where he had started to vomit, his attorney, Mike Howard, said, per CNN.
Leclair looked like he was "in a state of shock," Howard said, per the Dallas Morning News.
"I thought at that time that it was very serious and there was a good chance that he would not survive," he said.
Doctors arrived at the scene and provided "medical intervention."
Then they put him in an ambulance and took him to a hospital, Beck said. Howard said he saw Leclair take a "long drink from a water bottle" but didn't know what the liquid was, but Beck described it to the Denton Record-Chronicle as "cloudy."
Leclair died in the hospital. He would have faced up to 100 years in prison had he survived. An autopsy is planned, and the cause of death has yet to be revealed.