June 30, 2009(NY Post) -- TV pitchman Billy Mays probably died of a heart attack and not from hitting his head during a rough airplane landing, a Florida medical examiner said yesterday.
Mays, 50, famous for hawking cleaning products such as OxiClean in late-night infomercials, had complained he didn't feel well after banging his head on a Philadelphia-to-Tampa flight Saturday.
But an autopsy completed yesterday found that heart disease was to blame for his death. There was no evidence of blunt trauma or drug abuse, Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Vernard Adams said.
In a 911 tape released yesterday, a frantic woman, believed to be Mays' wife, Deborah, says she found him cold and unresponsive.
When the operator instructs her to get Mays on the floor to start CPR, a second person gets on the phone and says, "We can't get him up . . . He's gone."
Many of Mays' ads have been pulled from the airways, said Bruce Fleming, a spokesman for Church & Dwight, one of the companies that employed the pitchman.
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