Mystery as post-mortems fail to find how Brit family died in remote forest

Mystery as post-mortems fail to find how Brit family died in remote forest. British Google engineer Jonathan Gerrish, his wife Ellen Chung and their one-year-old daughter Muji were tragically discovered in an out of the way area of the Sierra National Forest on Tuesday evening, August 17.

Police initially suspected that carbon monoxide could be to blame for the deaths due to disused goldmines in the local area, but according to the Mariposa County Coroner toxicology reports could take three weeks.

According to California police officers the deaths are considered as a “very unusual, unique situation”, due to the fact that “there were no signs of trauma, no obvious cause of death…no suicide note.” Post-mortems have failed to show how the family tragically died.

So far it has not been possible to rule out the carbon monoxide or toxic algae theories put forward by the police. Speaking to the Mirror, Mariposa 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.

“You have two healthy adults, you have a healthy child and what appears to be a healthy canine all within a general same area.

“So right now, we’re treating the coroner investigation as a homicide until we can establish the cause.”

Even though it has not been possible to rule out carbon monoxide at this point in time so far according to Sherriff Briese no disused mine shafts have been found close by.

“We have not found any old mine shafts near the area,” said Sherriff Briese.

“There are some mine shafts, but we can’t confirm if that’s the cause yet.”

Kristie Mitchell, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said: “This is just a tragic, frustrating case for us.

“It will probably be a long, tedious investigation.”

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