Ever since the tragic death of 19-year-old Eric Chase Bolling, investigators have puzzled over whether and how the teen’s tragic death may have been tied to his father’s sexual harassment scandal.
In fact, there’s still a lot about Eric Chase’s death that we don’t know.
But a shocking new revelation about an incident that took place before his death may shed new light on how his life was cut tragically short.
Prior to the recent calls for justice against sexual predators in Hollywood in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, there was a similar, smaller ousting of men at Fox News who have been accused of sexual harassment.
There were, unfortunately, a lot of them, even within one organization. Critics accuse Fox News of having fostered a culture of permissiveness towards men and silence regarding their unacceptable behavior.
Eric Bolling was ousted for lewd sexting, after he was accused of sending unsolicited photos of his genitals to multiple women in the workplace.
Let’s be clear, folks — unsolicited dickpics are never okay. Best case scenario, the person on the other end doesn’t mind.
But it’s a far more likely scenario that they’ll be annoyed or feel harassed, pressured, uncomfortable, and even violated.
This is much more true when it comes to people in the workplace.
Do not send your nudes to your colleagues. Do not harass them. You are at work.
You would think that being ousted in such a scandal would be the worst moment in Eric Bolling’s life, or at least on that particular day.
It was not, however, because Eric Chase Bolling died just hours after that news broke.
Eric Chase Bolling’s cause of death was officially ruled as an accidental overdose. Cocaine and opiates were found in his system.
The report that this was accidental conflicted with initial reports that he had taken his own life.
His father had made efforts to clarify that they didn’t have all of the facts when people reported that the 19-year-old had taken his life.
Fatal overdoses tend to have a great deal of ambiguity, as they can sometimes be impossible to differentiate from suicides.
There’s an important factor to consider here:
Eric Bolling and his family were Roman Catholic. If his son’s death had been ruled as a suicide, it would have had implications for him — both in terms of where and how he could be laid to rest and, theologically, for what awaited him in the afterlife.
We’re not suggesting that Bolling exerted any pressures upon the medical examiner, but just stressing how important this ruling by the coroner was for the Bolling family.
The new information that has come to light does suggest that Eric Chase had a struggle with substance abuse that long predated his father’s scandal and dismissal.
RadarOnline is reporting that Eric Chase Bolling was involved in a stand-off with SWAT, two entire months before he died.
They report that, according to documents received from the Boulder police department, a 21-year-old University of Colorado student accused 19-year-old Eric Chase of holding him hostage at gunpoint.
The alleged incident did not occur on University of Colorado campus, where both men were students, but at an off-campus apartment.
On July 7th, the 21-year-old called his mother in North Carolina and reported to her that Eric Chase, whom he alleged was on cocaine at the time, and six others were refusing to allow him to leave the apartment.
The student’s mother called the police, who sent SWAT to Eric Chase’s apartment. The result was a stand-off.
It apparently took a full hour for police to talk Eric Chase into surrendering. He was cuffed and brought in for questioning, and the unnamed 21-year-old was freed.
An officer who interviewed Eric Chase noted in his report that he believed that 19-year-old Eric Chase was “intoxicated during the interview,” also noting:
“He was slurring his speech, his eyes were bloodshot and he was sweating profusely from his forehead.”
The officer’s report also mentioned a suspicion of “other illicit drugs” in the young man’s system. Despite that, Eric Chase only confessed to alcohol and marijuana.
Beyond that, Eric Chase’s roommate apparently gave a very damning report, alleging that the 19-year-old had been associating with a very wrong crowd.
“Throughout the summer Bolling…began bringing ‘kids’ over that were not in school. These people were selling drugs and carrying guns,” the roommate revealed to police.
Police were unable to find cocaine or guns in the apartment, but another witness alleged that the guns, at least, had been stashed in a woman’s trunk before police arrived.
It’s important to note that the accusations leveled by the roommate seem to suggest that Eric Chase was not leading these people, but that they liked the 19-year-old’s wealth and hung around him.
But this speaks to a massive problem.
And now we have to ask why an alleged armed kidnapping by a TV star’s son is only now becoming public knowledge. We can only guess.
This does put Eric Chase’s eventual overdose into perspective, however. It sounds like he really, truly had some problems.
