A medical examiner has confirmed that a man who took his own life in court last year had ingested a lethal amount of sodium nitrite.
Edward Leclair had been on trial in Texas on August 11, 2022, over five counts of sexual assault against a child. As the judge was reading the guilty verdict, however, the 57-year-old had swallowed the contents of a water bottle containing a cloudy liquid. He collapsed in his cell and passed away shortly after.
This week, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office revealed (via The Daily Mail) that Leclair's death had been ruled a suicide, and that the liquid in the bottle was found to contain sodium nitrite.
The convicted pedophile's cause of death was declared to be related to the effects of the lethal concoction.
The National Library of Medicine has detailed that sodium nitrate is an odorless powder often used to treat metals as well as in the preservation of meats. When in the human body it can limit oxygen delivery and transport - ingesting it can often cause hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the body), altered states of consciousness, cyanosis (poor circulation), and death.
Leclair - who had worked as a corporate recruiter before losing his job during the pandemic - had been found guilty on five counts of child sexual assault against one victim - a young girl that he'd raped five times from 2016 to 2018. She was aged between 13 and 17 at the time.
Upon hearing that he'd been found guilty on the first count, Leclair reportedly downed the liquid containing sodium nitrite. Soon afterward he was escorted back to his cell, The New York Post detailed. "As these verdicts were being read, he chugged a bottle of water he had at counsel table," Denton County Assistant District Attorney Jamie Beck told CNN at the time of Leclair's suicide.
"Our investigator noticed him chug the water," he added, saying that the liquid had looked cloudy. "He told the bailiff he might want to go check on him. The bailiff did. He was unconscious in the holding cell [...] Shortly after entering the holdover cell, he started vomiting, and emergency services were called."
CCTV footage from inside the Denton County Court shows Leclair purchasing a bottle of water from a vending machine outside court at 07:00 AM on the day of his hearing, The New York Times reported.
Prosecutors on the case believe that Leclair had put the toxic powder in his water bottle while the jury deliberated for three and a half hours.
His lawyer Mike Howard had told the Times that his client was facing 100 years in prison and had made a last-minute decision to die by suicide when he realized the severity of his crimes.
"I think he made the decision to do what he did at the last moment [...] Had he waited another 30 seconds, he would have been in sheriff's custody and not had access to that bottled water. He wouldn’t have been able to. So, you know, I think he knew," Howard explained.
