In an interview with ESPN.com on Tuesday, District Attorney Scott Ballard indicated that Daniel Benoit had needle marks in his arms. The district attorney said he believed that the boy had been given growth hormones for some time because the family considered him undersized.
Toxicology test results may not be available for weeks or even months. As for whether steroids played a role in the crime, he said: “We don’t know yet. That’s one of the things we’ll be looking at.” Steroids have been linked to the deaths of several professional wrestlers in recent years. Eddie Guerrero, one of Benoit’s best friends, died in 2005 from heart failure linked to long-term steroid use. The father of Curt Hennig blamed steroids and painkillers for Hennig’s drug overdose death in 2003. Davey Boy Smith, the “British Bulldog,” died in 2002 from heart failure that a coroner said was probably caused by steroids.
