Ted Koppel's 40-year-old son was found dead in a Washington Heights apartment early Monday after a daylong drinking binge, police sources said. The cause of Andrew Koppel's death has not been determined pending autopsy results.
Police were called to a building on Audobon Ave. about 1:30 a.m. They found the famed newsman's son unconscious. He couldn't be revived.
Sources said Andrew Koppel, who lived in Queens with his girlfriend and daughter, started boozing at a bar in Hell's Kitchen Sunday afternoon. Later that night, he went to the Audobon Ave. apartment with a man he met a bar, sources said.
There were no immediate signs of criminality. Investigators suspect alcohol or drugs.
Koppel was a former attorney for the Housing Authority's civil litigation division. He earned just under $78,000 when he resigned two years ago, an agency spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The death of the famed newsman's son was the latest in a series of alcohol-related incidents that marked the younger Koppel's life.
In 1993, Koppel was convicted of punching out a senatorial aide in Washington, D.C. Records show he got into a wreck in Maryland in 1990. Authorities suspected alcohol in the property damage accident.