San Diego
A 21-year-old volleyball player from Canada was found dead in his room at the Mission Valley Hotel Tuesday afternoon, after a natural-gas leak in his suite led to carbon monoxide poisoning, authorities said.
Cory Louis Korosi was found dead at 2:36 p.m., police said. His 20-year-old teammate, Henry Kim Wong, who was sharing the room with him, was found suffering from asphyxiation, police said. Wong was rushed to UC San Diego Medical Center, where he remained in critical condition Tuesday night.
Korosi and Wong were vacationing in San Diego during the holidays, police said. About a dozen of the men’s teammates, all of whom play volleyball for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary, were staying at the Mission Valley Inn at 875 Hotel Circle South.
Late Tuesday, Wong remained comatose as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, said Tom Banaszak, a spokesman for UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.
Korosi’s death is being ruled accidental, said a spokesman for the San Diego County Medical Examiner. But a police investigator, who asked not to be identified, said agents from the Metro Arson Strike Team were trying to determine whether the pilot light in the room’s heater had been turned out by one of the two men or extinguished as the result of faulty hotel equipment.
A spokesman for the Town and Country Hotel, which owns the Mission Valley Inn, declined comment Tuesday night.
A hotel executive found the two men after guests complained of a gas smell emanating from the room, police said.
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