The authorities in the Seychelles said Tuesday that they had determined that a combination of heroin and alcohol was responsible for the deaths of two former members of the Navy SEALs working as guards on board a container ship in February.
The two, Jeffrey Reynolds and Mark Kennedy, in their 40s, were found dead in a cabin aboard the Maersk Alabama, the cargo ship that became famous in 2009 after Somali pirates attacked it and took the captain hostage.
After autopsies determined the men had died of respiratory failure and possible heart attacks, officials in the Seychelles, a small Indian Ocean nation, requested further analysis of stomach contents and blood samples in Mauritius. Those tests “revealed no trace of any poison, thus ruling out foul play,” the police in the Seychelles said Tuesday.
A local pathologist then concluded that Mr. Reynolds’s and Mr. Kennedy’s heart failures “had been as a result of a combination of heroin and alcohol consumption,” the police said Tuesday in a statement.
Investigators found pills, syringes and a brown powder that later proved to be heroin in the cabin. The Seychelles, an archipelago about 1,000 miles east of Kenya, has one of the world’s highest rates of injectable drug use, according to the United Nations.
The earlier attack on the Maersk Alabama, which became the basis of the Oscar-nominated film “Captain Phillips,” was one of several high-profile episodes that led shipping companies to place armed security guards like Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Kennedy on their vessels.
The two former SEAL members worked for the Trident Group, a maritime security company in Virginia Beach. The company president said that contractors were required to submit to extensive drug screening every two years and that both men had passed their tests within the last 18 months.
The Maersk Alabama docked in February in Port of Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles. Witnesses said that Mr. Reynolds, who was 44, and Mr. Kennedy, 43, enjoyed a long night of drinking and gambling at the island’s casinos before returning to the ship at 6 a.m. They were found dead in Mr. Kennedy’s cabin that afternoon, Feb. 18.
The police statement said that the case had been forwarded to the attorney general’s office “for further consultation.”
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