Ted Koppel's 40-year-old son was found dead in a seedy New York City apartment on Memorial Day after a day of binge drinking.
A cause of death for Andrew Koppel — who was declared dead at around 1:30 a.m. Monday — has not yet been determined.
According to The New York Post, Koppel began drinking at around noon at a bar in NYC's Hells Kitchen when he befriended 32-year-old waiter Russell Wimberly.
"He had a straw hat on, and I had one on, and he said, 'Nice hat, man,' " Wimberly told the Post. "We got to talking, and he started buying me drinks."
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Koppel, who was drinking straight whiskey, then asked Wimberly to go bar hopping. In between bars, Wimberly told the Post Koppel was drinking from a pint bottle of Jameson
At around 11 p.m., after stopping at a liquor store to buy whiskey and beer, they headed to Wimberly's apartment in NYC's Washington Heights neighborhood, where Koppel was "a slobbering mess," the Post reports.
Belinda Caban, who lives at the apartment and claimed to have previously drank with Koppel, told the Post Koppel — an attorney for the city Housing Authority — "was very drunk … I didn't understand anything he said. We took him to the bedroom and laid him down to rest." After a couple of hours, she and Wimberly discovered he had urinated and defecated in the bed and appeared not to be breathing, so they called 911, according to the Post.
"His complexion wasn't right. It was pale. I said to call the police," Caban told the Post. "When the ambulance came, they said he was dead." His father, former anchor of ABC's Nightline, could not be reached for comment.
According to the Post, Koppel, who lives in Queens, N.Y, with his girlfriend and their baby daugher, was convicted in 1993 of punching out a senatorial aide in a boozy brawl and ordered to rehab. Three years earlier, he got into a drunken fender bender while driving his father's Mercedes in their home state of Maryland.
