A 22-year-old Oklahoma man fatally shot himself with his gun on Saturday while on a family ski vacation in Colorado, according to reports from the Summit County sheriff’s and coroner’s offices.
The family of the man, Luke Gregory Goodman, is blaming his suicide on the multiple doses of marijuana-infused edibles he ingested just hours before his self-inflicted death, according to witnesses and reports.
Goodman, a Tulsa resident and graduate of Oral Roberts University, would have turned 23 in April. He died just after 4 a.m. Tuesday morning at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Lakewood after more than two days on life support, according to Summit County Coroner Regan Wood.
“It was 100 percent the drugs,” Goodman’s mother, Kim Goodman, told Denver TV station CBS4, noting her son was well-adjusted. “It was completely because of the drugs — he had consumed so much of it.”
Wood said “the circumstances and manner surrounding the death are consistent with a suicide.” The cause of death, the coroner said, is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Summit County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Taneil Ilano said the case is still under investigation.
As for the presence of marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient, THC, in Goodman’s system, Wood is awaiting a toxicology report, which could take three weeks to be finalized. But Wood did note that witnesses said Goodman “had consumed a large amount of edible marijuana candies prior to his death.”
If medical personnel find a significant amount of THC in Goodman’s system and think it attributed to his taking his own life, it would make for the second suicide ascribed in part to edible marijuana since recreational sales started in January 2014.
In March 2014, 19-year-old Wyoming college student Levy Thamba became agitated after eating pot-infused edibles and leapt to his death from a Denver hotel balcony.
On Saturday, Goodman and his cousin Caleb Fowler had bused from Keystone to Silverthorne to buy some legal cannabis. “He was excited to do them,” Fowler told CBS4.
Once back in their Keystone condo at the Black Bear Lodge, they ate some of the edibles, with Goodman eating several “peach tart candies” that individually were infused with the state-mandated dose of 10 milligrams, Fowler told the station. When Goodman didn’t feel anything, he ate a couple more — ingesting a fifth edible, which would be five times the state’s recommended dose for cannabis.
Reading from the police report, Ilano said another friend said “he did consume edible marijuana candies that day. He ate four edibles, described as gummy bears.”
A few hours later, Fowler told CBS4, Goodman became “jittery.”
“He would make eye contact with us but didn’t see us, didn’t recognize our presence almost,” Fowler said. “He had never got close to this point. I had never seen him like this.”
When Goodman’s family left the condo that night, he refused to go along. Once his family was gone, Goodman retrieved a handgun “he typically traveled with for protection,” according to the station, and killed himself. A 911 call for possible shots fired came in at around 10 p.m. Saturday, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.
Kim Goodman told the station that her son hadn’t likely read the warnings on the edibles packaging about the standard 10-milligram serving size and the potential delay of its effects. She also said “there was no depression or anything that would leave us being concerned.”
When contacted by phone Thursday, Kim Goodman declined to comment because she’s talking exclusively with a Tulsa television station about her son’s death.
Goodman’s friends and family have been remembering a kind, spiritual and friendly young man on his Facebook page in the last few days.
“You were hated by no one and loved by all,” one friend remembered on Tuesday. Another friend recalled, “He always made time to hear out his friends and he enjoyed the greatest adventures God made available on this earth.”
Kim Goodman, who is planning a memorial service for her son on Friday in Tulsa, is now calling for action against Colorado’s still-controversial marijuana laws.
“I would love to see edibles taken off the market,” Kim Goodman told CBS4. “I think edibles are so much more dangerous.”
Oklahoma is one of the states that have asked the Supreme Court to strike down Colorado’s legalization law. The lawsuit filed in December by Oklahoma and Nebraska officials says the states have had an increase in costs from arrests and enforcement in their states when pot leaves Colorado.
