Tarrant County Judge Delays Release of Surfing Star's Autopsy Till "News Frenzy" Dissipates

On November 2, as you'll recall, pro surfer Andy Irons's body was found in a room at the Grand Hyatt DFW, a cache of prescription pill bottles by his bedside. His family insisted, no, those had nothing to do with the 32-year-old's death. Instead, they said, the world champion, who'd taken a room at the airport hotel on his way back to his home in Hawaii from Puerto Rico, was suffering from Dengue fever. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office said at the time it would know the cause of death within 90 days.

But on Monday, in a petition filed in Tarrant County District Court and posted to Courthouse News, Irons's widow Lyndie said the release of the autopsy was "imminent," and asked a judge to delay the report's release -- at least until "remaining questions about his death that have been posed to the Center for Disease Control" are answered. Says the petition, Lyndie and her newborn son "are dependent upon the financial well being of a company established by the celebrity of Andy Irons," and she's worried that if the Tarrant County M.E. releases the report sooner than later, she and her baby "would suffer immediate and irrevocable harm in that the branding value would be greatly diminished as a result of the intense news frenzy." She says in the filing that reporters are still hounding her, going so far as to camp out in her front yard.

According to an ABC affiliate in Honolulu, a Tarrant County judge granted Lyndie the petition. The autopsy will be released May 20.