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'I still feel like it had something to do with THC vaping:' UWM teen's cause of death 'undetermined'

Posted at 9:55 PM, Jan 28, 2020
and last updated 2020-01-28 23:50:33-05

A Walworth County family is looking for answers after the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death of 19-year-old Logan Tomasello as an "undetermined" cause.

Tomasello died on October 31st after vaping THC and nicotine, according to his family.

Toxicology reports found non-lethal amounts of THC and other substances in Logan's body but still could not find a cause of death.

"I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that they had no clue how a healthy young man could just die," said Logan's mother Monica Tomasello.

Family suspect that some other compound was inside the vaping cartridge that Logan bought on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Dr. Brian Peterson of the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office told TODAY'S TMJ4 that undetermined deaths are very rare.

"We test exhaustively. We are frustrated by undetermined. If you look at last year's data of all the cases that we did, about 2% ended up in the undetermined category … at the end of the day if we can’t find anything we are thinking it's probably a natural death we just don’t have a reason for it," said Peterson.

Logan’s family will now turn to genetic testing to see if something else could have caused his death.

“I’m worried about my daughter, I want to make sure she's protected she's safe. There has been no history of sudden cardiac death in either my ex-husbands family or myself ... if they do uncover something that was unknown, I’d feel incredibly surprised but I’d feel at least a little more comfortable knowing there was some reason behind all this,” said Monica.

The family is also hoping to retrieve the vape cartridge from the Milwaukee Police Department to do their own testing on what was inside it.