When Kyle Johnson was taken off life support five days after losing consciousness, his lungs were full of blood clots. The 33-year-old had asthma and was found unconscious shortly after complaining that he couldn’t breathe.
Just two weeks earlier, on April 11, 2022, Johnson had been exposed to thick black smoke when a fire swept through the Winters Hotel, a single-room occupancy hotel, leaving two residents dead and the building a hollow shell. Tenants in the adjacent Gastown Hotel, where Johnson lived, had to be relocated for months because of smoke damage.
Johnson’s younger sister, Jessica Burton-King, hoped a coroner’s investigation would provide answers.
But when she got the coroner’s report, 14 months after her brother’s death, it said Johnson had died of an overdose, based on a potentially fatal level of fentanyl and methamphetamine found in his body when he was admitted to hospital.
Burton-King knew her brother had an addiction. After his death, she raised money for overdose awareness.
But the coroner’s report just left her with more questions. Although the coroner, Cynthia Hogan, wrote that the blood clots may have contributed to Johnson’s death, her report made no mention of Johnson’s recent exposure to smoke.
Burton-King was shocked to learn there had been no autopsy — the evidence of lung clots came from hospital tests while he was still alive. Johnson’s death was not included in a coroner’s inquest that examined the deaths of the two Winters Hotel residents.
