Illinois Lottery Winner Poisoned With Cyanide

Cops now treating death as murder
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Suggested by Guvner
Posted Jan 8, 2013 12:38 AM CST
Illinois Lottery Winner Poisoned With Cyanide
This photo provided by the Illinois Lottery shows Urooj Khan, 46, of Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood, posing with a winning lottery ticket.    (AP Photo/Illinois Lottery)

The case of a Chicago man who died suddenly weeks after a big lottery win is now being treated as a murder, police say. Urooj Khan scored a $1 million scratchcard win in June and died the day after the check for his winnings was issued the following month, CNN reports. The medical examiner initially declared the death to be from natural causes but after a relative urged doctors to look into the case further, tests revealed that a lethal dose of cyanide had killed the 46-year-old.

No arrests have been made and Chicago police have declined to comment on who would have wanted to kill Khan, described by those who knew him as a hardworking and generous man. At a press conference after the win, Khan, who owned several dry-cleaning businesses, posed with his wife and daughter at the 7-Eleven where he bought the winning ticket and said he planned to use the money to expand his business, pay off his mortgage, and make a donation to a children's hospital. "I scratched the ticket, then I kept saying, 'I hit a million!' over and over again," he recalled. "I jumped two feet in the air, then ran back into the store and tipped the clerk $100." (More Illinois stories.)

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