Family learns how son died

Two months after Eric Morales collapsed, doctors say he died of an irregular heartbeat.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published June 10, 2005

WESLEY CHAPEL - When Eric Daniel Morales' parents left him that Saturday, he was playing his favorite video game: Dance Dance Revolution. He loved sweating to the music, using his feet on a floor pad to follow the arrows on screen.

Afterward the 17-year-old showered. He talked to his grandmother on the phone. Then he lay down.

He wasn't breathing when his mother found him.

That was April 2, and Morales' official time of death was 5:18 p.m. He died in the back of an ambulance on his way to Tampa's University Community Hospital.

For two months his death was a mystery.

Until Thursday, when the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office said the popular Wesley Chapel High School student died of an irregular heartbeat, or cardiac arrhythmia.

But that only explains how Morales died, not why. That is still a mystery.

"We don't know what the underlying cause of death was," said Dr. Vernard Adams, Hillsborough's chief medical examiner. "We know a lot of things that he didn't die from, but we don't know exactly what he did die from."

Morales' father, Eric, said he learned from the medical examiner that his son had an enlarged heart.

The younger Morales had long complained of purplish skin and chest pain, his parents said, and also was overweight, with high blood pressure and a family history of heart disease.

But he also had been to hospitals and seen doctors, they said, and was losing weight.

Cardiac arrhythmia occurs when the natural heart rhythm is altered. It can range from benign to life-threatening, including causing sudden death.

The chief medical examiner said testing ruled out other causes of death.

"We've tested for drugs and haven't found them," he said. "We haven't found heart disease, either. There are some heart diseases that cannot be tested for in an autopsy. They can only be tested for in a living person."

[Last modified June 10, 2005, 01:12:14]