Terry Long's Cause of Death Was Drinking Antifreeze

Yahoo

3 days ago

Former NFL player Terry Long died a tragic death.
The cause of death was suicide. In 2006, the former lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers took his own life by drinking antifreeze.
Long, 45, "committed suicide by drinking antifreeze, a revised death certificate shows, and did not die as a direct result of football-related head injuries," ESPN reported at the time.
Now his death and CTE are back in the news as a result of a rambling three-page note left behind by Shane Tamura, the former high school football player identified by police as the gunman who stormed a Park Avenue skyscraper, killing four people in Manhattan.
Shane Tamura mentioned Terry Long & antifreeze in his note, reports say
According to the New York Post, Tamura's note specifically mentioned Long.
'Terry Long, football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze,' gunman Shane Tamura wrote, according to the Post, before he killed Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, NYPD officer Didarul Islam, and two others.
According to ESPN, a medical examiner's official said that the antifreeze caused Long's brain and brain lining to swell, but that "football-related brain injuries were a contributing factor to the death."
The medical examiner changed its findings on Terry Long's death
The medical examiner's office had initially ruled that Long died of meningitis caused by chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, according to ESPN.
Long died in the hospital days after being found unresponsive in his home, the Associated Press reported at the time.
Dr. Bennett Omalu, a neurologist involved in Long's autopsy, said, according to AP:
'People with chronic encephalopathy suffer from depression. The major depressive disorder may manifest as suicide attempts. Terry Long committed suicide due to the chronic traumatic encephalopathy due to his long-term play.'
But Steelers team physician Dr. Joseph Maroon disagreed, according to AP.
'I think it's fallacious reasoning, and I don't think it's plausible at all,' Maroon said. 'To go back and say that he was depressed from playing in the NFL and that led to his death 14 years later, I think is purely speculative.'
The AP noted that Long had once tried to commit suicide by drinking rat poison after being accused of steroid use.
According to the AP, he had other reasons to be depressed as well: He was "separated from his second wife" and depressed about federal charges accusing him of having "fraudulently obtained loans for a chicken-processing plant which prosecutors allege he burned to the ground for the insurance money," AP noted .
"Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, is a brain disease likely caused by repeated head injuries. It causes the death of nerve cells in the brain, known as degeneration. CTE gets worse over time. The only way to definitively diagnosis CTE is after death during an autopsy of the brain," the Mayo Clinic reported. Terry Long's Cause of Death Was Drinking Antifreeze first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 29, 2025