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Metro

ABC producer Dax Tejera choked to death while drunk as he and wife left kids alone in NYC hotel room

By
Tina Moore and
Ben Kesslen
Published Feb. 8, 2023
Updated Feb. 9, 2023, 10:28 a.m. ET

An ABC News producer who died after he left his kids at a hotel so he and his wife could go to a posh Midtown restaurant choked to death because he was drunk, officials revealed Wednesday.

New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner confirmed to The Post that Dax Tejera’s official cause of death was “asphyxia due to obstruction of airway by food bolus complicating acute alcohol intoxication.”

Tejera, who was the executive producer of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” died suddenly on Dec. 23 at 37.

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Tejera leaves behind two young children.
Tejera leaves behind two young children. daxtejera/Instagram
Dax Tejera and his wife Veronica.Instagram/Dax Tejera
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ABC News president Kim Goodwin had originally said Tejera died of a heart attack.

His wife, Veronica, was arrested just hours after he collapsed for leaving the couple’s young kids alone in a hotel room in the Yale Club that evening. The widow and mother of two was charged with child endangerment but has insisted she was monitoring her children.

Pushing back on the charges, the mom said she brought her husband to the hospital and asked her parents and a close friend to watch their 5-month-old and 2-year-old while she monitored them by camera.

Dax Tejera
Dax Tejera died at the age of 37 in December 2022. daxtejera Instagram
ABC News Executive Producer Dax Tejeraâs and his wife.
Tejera’s official cause of death was “asphyxia due to obstruction of airway by food bolus complicating acute alcohol intoxication,” according to the NYC’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner. daxtejera/Instagram

“The hotel would not allow my friend in and instead called the NYPD,” she said in a statement after her arrest.

But sources told The Post the couple left their kids at home to go to dinner with friends at Bobby Van’s 230Park.

An employee there said Dax seemed unwell shortly into the meal, prompting a server to check on him.

“So, before anyone ate, just after the server brought the orders, he asked, ‘Are you OK, sir?’” the staffer told The Post. 

The inebriated producer then “got up and started walking like he was going to the men’s room, but he made a right instead and went out the front door and the server followed him outside.”

“The server said that he collapsed in the corner, right here outside the restaurant,” the employee said. “It was terrible and a terrible shame they left little, little children alone like that.”

Tejera joined ABC News in 2017 as a senior producer and moved over to Stephanopoulos’ show in February 2020.

He had previously worked at NBC News and graduated from Dartmouth College with a history degree and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.