By Tom Topousis
The New York Post
Copyright 2007 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
NEW YORK — A retired NYPD detective, whose death after working on the smoldering pile at Ground Zero made him a national symbol of the sacrifices of first responders, actually died as a result of injecting painkillers — and not from toxins in the air, according to a bombshell announcement yesterday.
“It is our opinion that that material entered his body via the bloodstream and not via the airways,” Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch, told The Associated Press.
Borakove said ground-up painkillers that Zadroga was injecting caused his lung disease, noting that traces of the pills were found in his lung tissue.
Zadroga died in January 2006 of scardiosis, a lung-scarring disease.
Hirsch released his determination that Zadroga’s death was not related to 9/11 a week ago.
But at the time, he would only publicly confirm that Zadroga’s death was not the result of exposure to toxic dust, a finding that he said he believed “with certainty beyond doubt.”
The cop’s father yesterday adamantly rejected the ME’s finding.
James Zadroga Sr. said his son was taking more than a dozen medications to cope with his illnesses when he died, including anti-anxiety medicine and painkillers such as OxyContin. But he insisted his son never ground up pills and injected them.
“Most definitely, I would have known. There was no way he was injecting it into his system. We personally gave him his medications so he wouldn’t miss them,” said Zadroga.
The detective and his 5-year-old daughter lived with his parents at their Little Egg Harbor, N.J., home after his wife, Ronda, died in 2004.
Zadroga’s father said the medical examiner’s decision to go public with his determination that the detective was injecting painkillers was in retaliation for the family’s decision to speak with reporters about the findings.
“I couldn’t believe they could come out with that,” said Zadroga. “He threatened us if we said anything to the press.”
Hirsch met with the Zadrogas on Friday, after they received a letter from his office.
Hirsch’s findings run counter to an earlier report from a New Jersey medical examiner who had ruled that Zadroga died from inhaling toxic dust at Ground Zero.
But the family sought a second opinion from the city’s medical examiner in hopes his ruling would clear the way to add their son’s name to the official list of 9/11 victims.
Zadroga spent 470 hours working at Ground Zero.
His father said yesterday the only reason he wanted the medical examiner to review the case was in order to have official recognition that the 34-year-old detective was among the heroes who perished as a result of 9/11.
“We wanted closure for his baby girl, so that she would know that her father died for the World Trade Center and that he was a hero. It was not for me,” Zadroga said.
Michael Baden, another pathologist hired by the family to review the case, disputed Hirsch’s findings.
Baden said that slides of Zadroga’s lung tissue showed glass fibers and other foreign particles close to airways, a sign that the material was inhaled. And he noted there was no mention of scars or needle marks on Zadroga’s arms in the original autopsy report.