Updated at 5:08 p.m. Jan. 26, 2017:
The death last month of the multimillionaire founder of CorePower Yoga, a nationwide chain of fitness studios, was due to accidental blunt-force head trauma apparently resulting from a spate of drunken falls in his Point Loma mansion, authorities said Thursday.
Patrol officers conducting a welfare check on 48-year-old Trevor Tice found his body at the entrance to a home office in his residence in the 900 block of Cornish Drive early on the afternoon of Dec. 12, according to San Diego police.
Due to the presence of obvious traumatic injuries on Tice’s body and “a large amount” of blood throughout the house, homicide detectives took charge of the case, SDPD Lt. Mike Holden said.
Postmortem examinations showed that Tice succumbed to head trauma he apparently suffered in a series of inebriated falls in his luxury home near Sunset Cliffs, according to the county Medical Examiner’s Office. Between the accidents, he evidently made his way through the residence and rested or slept on several beds and a sofa, bleeding profusely on walls, floors and furniture in the process.
A contributing cause to Tice’s death was fatty liver disease, which “could reasonably have contributed to … increased bleeding from his injuries, and alone (absent the head injuries) could have resulted in death,” according to the report.
Postmortem tests registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent — an amount 2 1/2 times the legal limit for driving — and the presence of several antidepressants and a tranquilizer in Tice’s system, the document states.
Tice’s father told investigators his son had “a history of chronic alcohol abuse and opiate abuse for which he had (undergone) at least one … admission to a rehabilitation facility,” the Medical Examiner’s Office reported.
Tice was last known to be alive early on the evening of Dec. 9, when a neighbor walking her dog saw him exiting an Uber vehicle, stumbling and appearing intoxicated. He bumped into the passing woman, prompting an argument during which Tice “fell face first into an ornamental palm tree,” according to the report.
Three days later, the mother of his child grew concerned after being unable to reach him by telephone and asked a woman she knows to check on him.
Getting no response at Tice’s front door, the friend notified a contractor who was on the property, finishing up a swimming-pool project. The worker entered the home and saw blood, after which the police were notified, according to the autopsy document.
Tice launched CorePower in 2002, initially opening 20 locations with funds from the sale of a prior firm he owned, information-technology outsourcing company Tech Partners International, according to a 2015 Inc. magazine story titled “Get Ready for the Starbucks of Yoga.”
The Colorado native had become a yoga practitioner in response to a rock- climbing accident that left him with two shattered ankles, the article reported.
The company’s studios offer the amenities of a high-end health club and exclusively teach a type of yoga that Tice personally customized, according to the magazine.
In 2013, CorePower’s expansion efforts led to an investment from private equity firm Catterton Partners that Tice described as “well north of $100 million.”
—City News Service
