The mysterious deaths of a British Google engineer and his family on a hiking trail were not a case of homicide, police say.
The bodies of Jonathan Gerrish, 45, his wife Ellen Chung and their daughter Muji – along with their dog Oski – were found by search teams on Tuesday in an area of the Sierra National Forest known as Devil’s Gulch. …
The Marisopa County Sheriff’s Office is now ruling out homicide in the hiking trail deaths, Fox News reports. Spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said: ‘Initially, yes, when we come across a family with no apparent cause of death, there’s no smoking gun, there’s no suicide note, there’s nothing like that, we have to consider all options.
‘Now that we’re five days in, no, we’re no longer considering homicide as a cause of death.’
Mr Gerrish, originally from Lancashire, had been a software developer for Snapchat and previously worked for Google. …
The couple were last heard from early on Sunday when they uploaded a photo of a backpack. Searchers began looking for the family on Monday after they were reported missing by friends when they did not report to work.
County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said: ‘I’ve been here for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a death-related case like this.
‘There’s no obvious indicators of how it occurred.’
Briese said there was no obvious cause of death and that he had not dealt with a case like this in his 20 years in the area.
‘You have two healthy adults, you have a healthy child and what appears to be a healthy canine all within a general same area,’ the sheriff explained.
‘So right now, we’re treating the coroner investigation as a homicide until we can establish the cause.’
Mike-SMO
Curious, that.
Commonalities for a whole family, including a dog, would likely be water or food preparation. Maybe something that they read about as being a “good idea”. Sort of sounds liked the couple and the “fish tank clearer” a few years back. Big difference between “is” and “contains”.
Mike-SMO
I have been (Loudly) informed of “cyanide bombs” (i.e., M-44, Anti-Coyote Cyanide Ejectors), however since there is no mention of any such device after 5 days of “exploration”, other causes have to be considered.
A properly installed M-44 should not have been any place near a public trail, so there are many possibilities. A “true believer” might have thought that the loss of a “pet” would generate activity in Congress for an anti-M-44 Bill. If that is so, I hope they left finger prints or DNA and that the Sheriff is open minded about “causation”.
Erisguy
This is the sort of thing you’d see occasionally from a well leak—hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide poisoning causes cyanosis, so that cause would have been apparent.
Mike-SMO
H(2)S can cause problems in wells, septic tanks, and sewers for humans and for concrete. Unless the family was investigating a live volcano, H(2)S doesn’t seem to be a likely cause. Something that got all of the family as well as the dog, would be something in common to all. Like that last bag of jerky, or that last bottle of water. Still curious. Suicide?
The Sheriff is going to have fun with this one.
Erisguy
H2S poisoning in open space: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-deadly-smell-of-success/
“ a man in a pickup truck drove into a low section of the highway near Andrews that was filled with hydrogen sulfide. He died in that dip in the highway. Two others attempting to rescue him also died.”
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