This Is A Very Strange Story

Remember when the media was blaming President Trump for the death of the man in Arizona who died from drinking fish tank cleaner? Well, he did die from drinking fish tank cleaner, but there are a lot of details surrounding his death that somehow have been overlooked in the major media.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article on Friday about some details that were somehow left out of the mainstream media.

The article notes:

But friends of 68-year-old Gary Lenius, the Arizona man who passed away last month from drinking a fish tank cleaner that contained an ingredient, chloroquine phosphate, that Trump had touted as a potential coronavirus cure, say they are still struggling to understand what drove an engineer with an extensive science background to do something so wildly out of character.

These people describe Lenius as intelligent and levelheaded, not prone to the sort of reckless and impulsive behavior he reportedly engaged in on the day he died. This account is based on interviews with three people who knew Lenius well and paints a picture of a troubled marriage characterized by Wanda Lenius’s explosive anger.

The article goes on to detail some of Wanda Lenius’s destructive behavior toward her husband–destroying his aircraft model collection that represented hours of work to create and at one time breaking husband’s laptop screen, allegedly because she was angry he had updated the Windows software on her computer.

The article notes:

In a phone interview with the Free Beacon, Wanda said she and her husband had seen President Trump praise a drug called chloroquine on the news, citing preliminary studies that showed it could be a promising treatment for coronavirus. She said she remembered purchasing a jar of “chloroquine phosphate” years before to clean a fish tank.

The powder form of the drug is sold by aquarium suppliers and is used to treat viral outbreaks in large fish tanks. She told the Free Beacon she had mentioned this to her husband “and he kind of laughed at me, you know. It was just a regular conversation.”

She said she didn’t think about chloroquine again until a few days later, March 22, when Lenius confessed to her that he had hurt his leg while riding his new dirt bike and might have to go see a doctor.

“I’d already stocked the house with groceries and extra dog food and everything was set. We were ready to self-isolate,” said Wanda. “He didn’t want to tell me that he got hurt bad because he knew I was upset. I didn’t want him to ride a motorcycle, he was 68 and I didn’t want him getting hurt.”

Wanda Lenius said her husband was planning to schedule a doctor’s appointment to have his leg looked at and the couple worried he might pick up coronavirus at the clinic. That’s when, she said, she reached for the fish tank cleaner in her pantry.

There is no way of knowing if Wanda Lenius knew that her actions would result in her husband’s death. However, it was a really, really dumb thing to do. I suspect the friends of the couple have their own ideas of what the truth is, but I suspect we will never really know if Wanda Lenius understood exactly what she was doing.