Former New York Giants defensive end Josh Mauro died of an accidental overdose after a reported four-day binge at his Arizona home that ended when a dancer found him on the floor and called emergency services. A Phoenix Police Department case report and toxicology findings now lay out the last hours before his death.
The report said Mauro invited a dancer, a friend and two other women to his home in the early morning hours of April 23. The dancer told investigators that Mauro and his friend began snorting cocaine while all of them drank tequila and listened to music. After a few hours, she and the other women went upstairs to sleep while Mauro and his friend continued to hang out downstairs.
When she awoke later that day, she said she found Mauro alone and apparently dead on the floor. She tried to revive him and called for help. Police found a bottle cap with a white substance, a white powdery substance near a rolled-up dollar bill, tissues with apparent blood on them and a syringe in a trash can near his body.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner said Mauro had traces of fentanyl, cocaine, ethanol, cannabinoids and caffeine in his system and ruled the death an accidental overdose. He was 35. The dancer described Joshua as being happy and a sweetheart before the incident, but also said he had been on a bender for 4 days and would get frequent nosebleeds and sweat after snorting cocaine.
That detail leaves the sharpest unanswered question. She said she met him in mid-April, about one week before he died, but the report does not say when the binge began or how it escalated to the point where he was found dead on the floor. What is clear is that the case has turned a former NFL career that included one season with the Giants into a fatal account of cocaine, alcohol and fentanyl in Phoenix.
