More tests needed on Russian UN ambassador’s cause of death
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NEW YORK — Medical examiners who performed an autopsy on Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday that more tests are needed to determine how and why he fell ill in his office and later died.
Vitaly Churkin, who died Monday at a hospital at age 64, had been Russia’s envoy at the U.N. since 2006. He was the longest-serving ambassador on the Security Council, the U.N.’s most powerful body.
City medical examiners concluded Churkin’s death needed further study, which usually includes toxicology and other screenings. Those can take weeks.
The medical examiner is responsible for investigating deaths that occur by criminal violence, by accident, by suicide, suddenly or when the person seemed healthy or in any unusual or suspicious manner. Most of the deaths investigated by the office are not suspicious.
