Homicide by Asthma

Abstract

Asthma may be the cause of death in some homicides. Bronchial asthma is a common disease, and the National Institutes of Health have estimated that 10.5% (30.2 million) of the United States population have been diagnosed with asthma. Acute exacerbations of bronchial asthma may be rapidly fatal, and medical examiner/coroner offices commonly encounter such deaths. Though asthma is a natural disease, acute exacerbations may be triggered by outside stressors, including harmful or criminal activities such as assaults. In these instances, the manner of death is appropriately certified as homicide. We describe three homicides in which asthma was deemed to be the proximate cause of death. In each of these fatalities, the decedent was subjected to physical and/or emotional stress of a harmful or criminal nature that resulted in an acute exacerbation of asthma that resulted in their death. Medical examiners/coroners must consider the decedent's history of disease; the circumstances surrounding the death; and the autopsy, histologic, and toxicologic findings in order to properly certify the cause and manner of death. A fatality with a natural proximate cause of death still may be certified as a homicide.