A CDC doctor who vanished in February drowned himself and was pulled from an Atlanta river about two months after going missing, authorities now believe.
Cunningham, a Harvard-educated epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was last seen alive leaving work Feb. 12, after complaining that he felt ill.
On April 3 — after much fruitless searching and mystery, some of whichspawned wild and since-debunked conspiracy theories— his body was pulled from the Chattahoochee River.
The chief medical examiner, Dr. Jan Gorniak,toldThe Atlanta Journal-Constitutionthat toxicology testing found marijuana in Cunningham’s system, but there were no other significant findings.
His body showed no other signs of trauma, according to authorities.
According to the autopsy report, Cunningham’s parents told police that he did have frequent mood swings but that he had never been officially diagnosed with depression or any other mental illness.
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A Strange Disappearance
Left behind in his tidy yellow home was the dog he doted on, Mr. “Bo” Bojangles, along with his ID, credit cards and passport. His car was parked in the garage; his keys, wallet and phone all were safely locked inside the residence.
“This is an extremely unusual set of circumstances,” Atlanta police major Michael O’Connor said at a Feb. 27 news conference. “Every single belonging we were aware of was located in the residence.”
He added: “It is not common in missing-person cases for us to find someone’s entire belongings.”
“Tim was always the golden boy,” a colleague at the CDC previously told PEOPLE.
In his position Cunningham prominently studied heath patterns related to race, gender and geography. For his work, theAtlanta Business Chroniclefeatured him last October as one of its “40-Under-40” rising stars in the region.
“He expressed a strong desire to improve the health of others,” journalist Tonya Layman, who interviewed Cunningham for hisChronicleprofile, told PEOPLE. “I was really impressed with his intellect and his passion for the work he was doing.”
source: people.com
