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Coroner reports cause of death for notary

Steven Miller

LAS VEGAS — The notary for Lender Processing Services in Las Vegas, who was found dead last November, died with three medicines in her bloodstream, according to the Clark County Coroner’s office.

Tracy Lawrence had been scheduled to appear for sentencing in a plea deal with the Nevada Attorney General’s Office on Monday, Nov. 28, 2011, but was later found dead at home.

Cause of death was initially not known. Today, following toxicology tests, a coroner’s office spokesman told Nevada Journal the cause of death was listed as “dithenhydramine-alprazolam-hydroxyzine intoxication.”

Alprazolam, according to the National Institutes of Health’s online library of medicine, is a prescription medicine used to treat anxiety and panic disorder (sudden, unexpected attacks of extreme fear and worry). Xanax is a well-known brand name for alprazolam.

Hydroxyzine is used both for anxiety and for the relief of itching caused by allergies. Additionally, it is used to control nausea and vomiting caused by various conditions, including motion sickness. It is also used to treat the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.

Dithenhydramine is taken to relieve red, irritated, itchy, watery eyes, sneezing and runny nose caused by hay fever, allergies, or the common cold.

Intoxication has both a technical and a popular meaning. According to Merriam-Webster.com, the primary meaning is “an abnormal state that is essentially a poisoning,” as in “carbon monoxide intoxication.”

A secondary meaning is “the condition of being drunk.”

Steven Miller is the managing editor of Nevada Journal, a publication of the Nevada Policy Research Institute. For more in-depth reporting, visit http://nevadajournal.com/ and http://npri.org/.

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Steven Miller

Senior Vice President, Nevada Journal Managing Editor

Steven Miller is Nevada Journal Managing Editor, Emeritus, and has been with the Institute since 1997.

Steven graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Philosophy from Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna). Before joining NPRI, Steven worked as a news reporter in California and Nevada, and a political cartoonist in Nevada, Hawaii and North Carolina. For 10 years he ran a successful commercial illustration studio in New York City, then for five years worked at First Boston Credit Suisse in New York as a technical analyst. After returning to Nevada in 1991, Steven worked as an investigative reporter before joining NPRI.

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Nevada Journal, a member of the Nevada Press Association (NPA) and Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), is an independent nonprofit reporting effort that adheres to the SPJ standards of professional journalism and specializes in in-depth and investigative journalism.

For the last 20 years, Nevada Journal has been published by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan public-policy think tank.