New details have emerged several weeks after Gabby Petito’s fiance Brian Laundrie returned from a van life trip they shared alone and refused to speak to authorities.
In a press conference on Tuesday, the Teton County coroner released the autopsy results of 22-year-old Gabby Petito’s cause of death.
The details follow the revelation last month that her death was a homicide.
Gabby Petito’s cause of death was strangulation.
“In the manner of death in Gabrielle Venora Petito, we find the cause of death the cause is by strangulation, and the manner is homicide,” Dr. Blue said in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Blue added that her time of death is estimated to be about three to four weeks after her body was found in the Wyoming national park.
Brian Laundrie has not been officially named a suspect in her death as the FBI and local police continue to search for the missing person of interest.
The Teton County coroner also debunked an internet theory that Petito was pregnant by confirming that she was not at the time of death.
Gabby Petito’s cause of death was manual strangulation
Gabby Petito was strangled to death by a human. The coroner wrote that Petito died by “manual strangulation/throttling” in the official reporting, according to News Nation Now correspondent Brian Entin.
The New York Post reports that Blue told Anderson Copper that “throttling means that someone was strangled by human force” and added that “there was no mechanical force involved.”
When asked how he could differentiate Petito’s wounds from an animal, the coroner told Copper the following:
“Mainly because only humans have opposable thumbs. There is no evidence that this was done by any animal as far as the cause of death.”
Coroner alludes to domestic violence
During the press conference, the Teton County coroner mentioned that he is limited in what he can say when fielding questions about Petito’s death.
Therefore, he did not speculate about Brian Laundries’ involvement in Petito’s death.
However, during the press conference, Dr. Brent Blue took a moment to highlight the frequency of domestic violence-related deaths and allude to Petito being a victim.
“Unfortunately, this is only one of many deaths around the country of people who are involved in domestic violence, and it’s unfortunate that others’ death do not get as much coverage as this one.”
In a separate interview on Anderson Cooper 360 asked Blue about his comments alluding to domestic violence, to which he said:
“That’s an assumption,” Blue said. “That was strictly an assumption.”