The Texas ranch owner who found deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s body on Saturday said he looked “like he was taking a nap.”
John B. Poindexter, proprietor of the Cibolo Creek Ranch, told The New York Times on Sunday that he waited two hours after first checking on Scalia before entering his suite. Once he did, he found that “his hands were sort of almost folded on top of the sheets. The sheets weren’t rumpled up at all.”
The ranch keep said the 79-year-old jurist was clearly dead, but peacefully so.
“It was just like he was taking a nap,” Poindexter said. “He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Scalia was part of a large hunting party checked into the ranch, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott confirmed in a statement.
Scalia went to bed Friday night after telling friends he wasn’t feeling well. After failing to appear at breakfast on Saturday morning, his hunting party left the property without him. Poindexter later discovered in his room.
Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara announced on Sunday that Scalia’s cause of death was myocardial infraction, or a heart attack. At the time of his death, Scalia was the longest-tenured member of the current Supreme Court, having served on the bench for nearly 30 years.