A second autopsy of 30-year-old Kalamazoo doctor Teleka Patrick confirmed the previous autopsy's conclusion that she had died of asphyxia from drowning, a private investigator hired by Patrick's family told the news website MLive.
Jim Carlin, the investigator, told the news site that he attended the second autopsy, which was conducted Friday at the Marion County coroner's office in Indiana. He said the family had lingering questions about Patrick’s cause of the death after a Wednesday news conference at the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office.
Patrick's family has still not ruled out foul play, something that neither autopsy indicated, Carlin told MLive. Coroner Chuck Harris of Porter County, Ind., performed the first autopsy April 8, three days after a fisherman found Patrick's body at a northern Indiana lake.
"The reason the family did [the second autopsy] is because they have been so concerned about what they heard about the case coming to a conclusion," Carlin said, MLive reports. "We now know the answer of where is Teleka, but they're demanding to learn what truly happened to her."
Patrick disappeared on Dec. 5 after finishing a shift at Borgess Medical Center, where she was in the first year of a four-year residency in psychiatry.
Her 1997 Lexus was discovered with a flat tire that night in a ditch on Interstate 94 near mile marker 23 in Indiana, the MLive report says, but Patrick and the keys were gone by the time officers from the Indiana State Police arrived at the scene, about 10 minutes after a caller reported seeing the vehicle in the ditch.
Read more at MLive.