Ronald Cross, known during the Oka crisis by his Mohawk nickname "Lasagna", died Monday night.

Cross, 41, had been working as a steelworker on the Champlain Bridge in Montreal when he complained to his co-workers he wasn't feeling well. His co-workers found him unconscious in his car and rushed him to hospital where he apparently died of heart failure.




Cross was one of the best known Mohawk warriors involved in a tense 11 week stand-off with Quebec police and Canadian troops in the summer of 1990. The Mohawks were trying to block the expansion of a golf course onto ancestral lands.

A provincial police officer was killed during the crisis.

Cross became a symbol of the stand-off when he was shown dressed in army fatigues and wearing a mask standing nose-to-nose with a Canadian soldier.

It turns out Cross wasn't the man in the photo. But the incident gained him notoriety.

Cross later wrote a book about the Oka crisis and said he never wanted to be known as "Lasagna the warrior."

Cross got his nickname from his mother's Italian cooking.

He was sentenced to six years in prison on charges related to the Oka confrontation. He was released only last month. He is survived by his four children