Industry Veteran Chris Lebrun Dies Following Pneumonia Battle

LOS ANGELES—Longtime industry salesperson Chris Lebrun died at approximately 2 a.m. Wednesday morning after a week in intensive care with pneumonia in both lungs.  Lebrun had traveled to California's Big Bear resort area early last week while suffering from a case of bronchitis, and the night of April 16 went to a local ER when he began to experience difficulty breathing; he was diagnosed there with pneumonia. While waiting to be admitted, he went into cardiac arrest, and after being revived was air lifted to a hospital in Upland. He remained on life support until his passing this morning. According to a Facebook post from family friend Maria Groezinger, "He died peacefully surrounded by love." Lebrun is survived by his wife Bee and son Luca. Starting out in adult in 2000 as the director of marketing for Leisure Time Entertainment, Lebrun came to AVN in 2004, where he served as a Senior Account Executive focusing on the Internext Expo and AVN Online magazine until 2009. He went on to hold sales positions at traffic broker Trafficshop.com and ad network Etology, before moving over to the cannabis industry in January of this year by taking an account executive post at Cannabis Now magazine.  AVN founder Paul Fishbein, who hired Lebrun in 2004, commented, "I'm shocked, he was so young. He was a valuable part of the AVN family for a long time, and I'm really stunned to hear of his passing, and really sorry to his family." Added former AVN CEO Darren Roberts, "Chris was both a friend and colleague, my heart goes out to his family." Pictured: Lebrun with (l to r) AVN's Sherri Shaulis, Beth Noonan, Sara Harter and Bonnie Leblanc, taken from his Facebook page.