April 20, 2001
(ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland) – A law professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University died in a Canadian hospital after swallowing packages of cocaine in an effort to smuggle it into the United States from Amsterdam.
Gennady Danilenko became ill on a trans-Atlantic flight last Sunday. His plane, bound for Detroit, made an emergency landing in St. Johns. He died in a hospital there Wednesday.
Doctors found that Danilenko had swallowed 12 packages of cocaine wrapped in plastic and that six had burst, giving him a lethal overdose, according to Canadian police. Investigators believe that Danilenko, a recognized expert on international law, was smuggling the cocaine for his personal use. Danilenko, a Russian national, had been in Amsterdam as a visiting scholar at an institute there.