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.
37-year-old Tejera died at the restaurant where he was having dinner with his wife and friends two days before Christmas while spending the holidays in New York City.
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.’
ABC News president Kim Goodwin previously attributed his death to a heart attack.
His wife, Veronica, was arrested just hours after he collapsed for leaving their children, aged two years old and five months old 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.
‘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.
Tejera was the executive producer of ABC’s ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos.’
