GAME CHANGER

New Autopsy Report Suggests Connecticut Banker Did Not Kill Hotel Handyman in Anguilla

The coroner’s revised autopsy report suggests that the handyman in a high-profile manslaughter case died from a lethal dose of cocaine.

A new autopsy report suggests that a hotel handyman whose death on the Caribbean island of Anguilla led to manslaughter charges being filed against a Connecticut tourist had taken a lethal dose of cocaine. Gavin Scott Hapgood, a UBS banker from Connecticut, has long claimed that his fight with the handyman, Kenny Mitchel, last April occurred out of self-defense when Mitchel came to his hotel room and began acting aggressively. A coroner previously ruled that Mitchel had been asphyxiated during the struggle, however, and Hapgood was charged with manslaughter. Now, however, the same coroner’s revised autopsy report, updated with toxicology results, found that Mitchel died from a lethal dose of cocaine. “Acute cocaine toxicity could have been a potentially independent cause of death in the known circumstances,” Dr. Stephen King, who oversaw the autopsy, wrote in the report.