Sean Levert News

The unexpected passing of Sean Levert earlier this year may not have been fair, but it was natural.

An Ohio coroner has announced that the R&B singer, who died March 31, barely one week into a one-year, 10-day jail sentence for failure to pay child support, succumbed to natural causes.

Cleveland County Coroner Frank Miller said the 39-year-old entertainer died from complications of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, and that he also suffered from several other naturally occurring conditions at the time of death, including cardiovascular disease and withdrawal from alprazolam, an antianxiety drug.

Before his death, jail guards at Cuyahoga County described the singer as acting strangely and restrained him in his cell before noticing his breathing turn shallow. He was quickly taken to Cleveland's Lutheran Hospital. Despite his incarceration, foul play and trauma were quickly ruled out.

Levert—the son of O'Jays singer Eddie Levert, brother of the late Gerald Levert and member of the '80s R&B trio Levert—was in jail after pleading guilty in March to six counts of failure to pay nearly $90,000 in child support for his three surviving children, ages 11, 15 and 17.