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Man who died in marathon had congenital heart disease

Marc Witkes, who collapsed and died in last month’s Tucson Marathon, suffered from complications of congenital heart disease, a Pima County coroner has determined.

Shane Benjamin, staff writer for the Durango (Colo.) Herald, has reported that Witkes, 40, a resident of Durango, had two congenital heart abnormalities, according to Dr. Eric Peters. He was born with a bicuspid aortic valve and the blood vessels supplying the victim’s heart muscles were abnormal, the report said.

While running his last mile, Witkes became unconscious and his heart stopped, Peters told Benjamin.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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