Cause of death released for woman found near Bay Trail
Apr 9, 2018
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office recently ruled that the Mountain View woman whose body was found floating in the water along the Bay Trail in Sunnyvale last December died of drowning.
According to an autopsy report medical examiner Dr. Joseph O’Hara signed off on March 28, Chuchu Ma had “multiple minor blunt force injuries and pulmonary edema consistent with drowning.”
But while Ma’s cause of death may be known, the manner of her death remains undetermined, perhaps indefinitely. Monday morning, Capt. Shawn Ahearn of the Sunnyvale Department of Pubilc Safety said Ma’s case is now considered closed.
The 23-year-old Google engineer was found in the water Dec. 7 and pronounced dead at the scene. The autopsy report, obtained by the Town Crier, noted that witnesses saw Ma entering the water the previous day and that a 911 call showed her to be disoriented. The report states that Ma’s “confused state is highly suggestive of psychotic behavior and may explain her entry into the water.”
However, nothing in Ma’s medical records revealed that she had expressed suicidal thoughts.
The autopsy report ruled out any sexual violence against Ma, based on the lack of physical injuries.
The toxicology report also came back clean for any alcohol, illegal drugs or prescription drugs. Only caffeine was found in her system.
In December, a representative from the county’s medical examiner-coroner’s office said that the autopsy and toxicology reports were supposed to take four to 12 weeks. Instead, it took the county four months to release Ma’s cause of death.
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Autopsy shows Google engineer drowned, but why she went into the water is a mystery
April 7, 2018
Chuchu Ma’s nude body was found in the Bay on Dec. 7.
Chuchu Ma talked about “going into the water” on a disoriented 911 call that she made the day before her naked body was found floating in a drainage ditch of the San Francisco Bay last December, according to emails and autopsy documents obtained by the Post.
Santa Clara County Medical Examiner Joseph O’Hara signed off on Ma’s autopsy report on March 28, declaring that the 23-year-old Google engineer had drowned to death, but leaving her manner of death as undetermined. He and investigators were still puzzled over the circumstances surrounding her death as recently as last week.
Sunnyvale police detectives have ruled out foul play, but believe Ma’s death was more likely an accident than a suicide, according to an email from Santa Clara County Coroner Investigator Andrea Whelan.
“I do not see how this is an accident…why would she completely undress and jump in the water?” O’Hara asked in an email to Whelan on March 26. “Unless they mean that she was psychotic and drowned accidentally while hallucinating.”
The psychosis theory appears to have been the most conclusive one that police could come up with. “The police think that the decedent may have been psychotic and drowned accidentally, however her comments on the 911 tape about ‘going into the water’ cannot be ignored,” Whelan wrote back to O’Hara on March 28. “The police are just not thinking this is a clear ‘suicide.’”
Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Capt. Shawn Ahearn told the Post yesterday that his department had not yet received Ma’s autopsy report, but would make a “full release” on the investigation once it had.
Ma was making plans for the future as late as the day before she was found dead, according to an email to investigators from her mother, Li Chen.
She booked a January plane ticket from San Francisco to Munich, Germany on Dec. 6, according to a Jan. 9 email from Chen to Whelan and Sunnyvale police Detective Matt Hutchison.
Ma was also planning a January trip to Austin, Texas, where she graduated from the University of Texas in 2016, Chen said. Her 24-year-old boyfriend, Isaac Smith, is a third-year math Ph.D. student there.
Investigators did not find evidence of suicidal ideations or threats in Ma’s medical records, though they were still searching her medical records the day that O’Hara signed off on her cause and manner of death, according to emails.
Injuries consistent with drowning
Excess water in Ma’s brain and lungs, along with mild scrapes to her forehead and body, appeared consistent with a drowning, O’Hara wrote.
She had no other injuries and the only drug in her system was caffeine. Her blood sugar was slightly elevated and she had chronic pancreatitis, but this didn’t seem to be relevant to her death, O’Hara wrote. There was no indication of a sexual assault.
In a Jan. 10 email to Ma’s mother, Li Chen, Whelan asked if Ma had ever suffered from narcolepsy or sleepwalking, but Chen said she wasn’t aware of anything like that.
Chen suggested that Ma may have fallen off her bicycle and dropped a medical device she was wearing for a glucose study in the water and drowned while trying to retrieve it.
“She fell off her bike several times before,” Chen wrote.
O’Hara noted that, “according to reports,” she was witnessed entering the water on Dec. 6 while using her cellphone, but didn’t say who had seen this happen.
Sounded confused in a 911 call
Ma had been behaving erratically “according to her companion” and a 911 call recording in which she sounded “confused and disoriented,” O’Hara wrote.
Smith, who was visiting Ma at the time of her death, reported her missing to the Mountain View police at 2:25 p.m. on Dec. 7, four hours after a passing bicyclist found her body along the San Francisco Bay Trail, north of the Golf Club at Moffett Field.
Smith said he hadn’t seen Ma since 10:30 a.m. the day before.
The county medical examiner’s office took almost four months to release Ma’s autopsy report. The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety has remained tight-lipped on the investigation while awaiting the finalized autopsy.
Six days after Ma was found dead, Ahearn said there was “no danger to the public” in the area where Ma was found. She lived in an apartment in Mountain View and had worked for Google since July 2016 after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.
Friends and family have remembered her in online tributes as a passionate and talented engineer and musician as well as an adventurous social butterfly who brought people together over food, Nintendo games and outdoor adventures.
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Autopsy reveals Google engineer drowned in the Bay
April 9, 2018
The 23-year-old Google engineer who was found dead in the waters of the Bay in December had drowned, but the circumstances surrounding her death still remain a mystery, according to autopsy and toxicology reports released last week.
Chuchu Ma’s naked body was discovered floating prone in a Sunnyvale canal along the Bay Trail on Dec. 7, just hours after her boyfriend called Mountain View police to report that she had gone missing. Ma’s boyfriend reportedly said she was behaving erratically in the days leading up to her death, and that a 911 call recording “revealed her to be confused and disoriented,” according to the autopsy report. The report didn’t indicate who made the 911 call and at what time. Ma was also reportedly seen entering the water the previous day with her cellphone.
Although the autopsy report revealed the cause of death was drowning, it did little to clear up the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. Her body showed signs of minor blunt force injuries, with red abrasions on several parts of the body including the forehead, upper back, chest and abdomen, but the report did not draw any conclusions from the injuries.
A review of Ma’s medical history didn’t reveal much either, the report stated, with no documented signs of “suicidal ideations or threats.” Medical records showed a history of slightly elevated fasting glucose levels, and she had signs of pancreas inflammation, according to the autopsy report.
A toxicology report shows that Ma did not have any noteworthy drugs or medications in her body when she died, finding only elevated levels of caffeine. The tests screened for a laundry list of substances including ethanol, amphetamines, antidepressants, antipsychotic agents, opioids and sedatives.
The autopsy report listed the manner of death as “undetermined,” but noted that Ma’s strange behavior prior to the death may have led her to get into the Bay waters.
“Her reported confused state is highly suggestive of psychotic behavior and may explain her entry into the water,” according to the report.
Sunnyvale police released a brief press release Monday afternoon stating that the department’s investigation found no evidence of foul play in Ma’s death. The investigation sought to retrace her steps leading up to the discovery of her body on Dec. 7 to determine if anyone was involved in her death, but it did not include trying to figure out why she may have entered the water and drowned, according to Cpt. Shawn Ahearn of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. Determining the manner of death falls under the purview of the autopsy report, he said.
“There is no evidence to indicate foul play,” Sunnyvale police said in the press release. “And because intent cannot be unequivocally determined, the medical examiner has ruled the manner of death to be undetermined.”
Ma, a Mountain View resident, joined Google as a software engineer in July 2016 after previously attending the University of Texas at Austin, according to her LinkedIn profile. The company put out a statement shortly after her death offering condolences and noting that she was an “excellent” software engineer on the developer product team.
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No evidence of foul play in mysterious death of Google software engineer
Updated April 9, 2018
No foul play is suspected in the mysterious death of a 23-year-old Google software engineer, whose body was found floating in a drainage canal off a hiking trail in Sunnyvale last December, officials said Monday.
Chuchu Ma, of Mountain View, was found Dec. 7, 2017 in the water of a drainage canal along the Bay Trail. Her body was recovered by a dive team from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
Ma died of drowning, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said in a statement, but the manner of death remains undetermined following an autopsy.
“Based on the department’s investigation and the autopsy from the Santa Clara County medical examiner, it has been determined Chuchu Ma died of drowning,” officials said. “There is no evidence to indicate foul play and because intent cannot be unequivocally determined, the medical examiner has ruled the manner of death to be undetermined.”
Ma was reported missing by her boyfriend the day her body was found. Capt. Shawn Ahearn, of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, said that the boyfriend was not a suspect in the case at any point.
File photo of generic hospital emergency room. Close up of sign for emergency department in hospital
“There were no suspects in this case,” Ahearn said. “We were investigating a death, and we did a very thorough investigation.”
Google praised Ma’s work at the company following her death.
“Chuchu was an excellent software engineer in our developer product team,” a Google representative said in a statement at the time. “We are devastated to learn of her passing, and our deepest condolences are with her family and friends.”
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Doctor offers a hypothesis about how Google engineer died
April 9, 2018
Why Chuchu Ma spoke about “going into the water” on a disoriented 911 call the day before her naked body was found in a drainage ditch of the San Francisco Bay remains a mystery to medical examiners, but one Palo Alto endocrinologist has offered a compelling hypothesis.
Dr. Elizabeth Fraze suggested that, considering the 23-year-old Google engineer’s history of pancreatitis and the fact that she was monitoring her blood sugar with a medical device, she may have experienced the cognitive impairment and behavioral changes that can accompany the low blood sugar state suffered by diabetics.
“Diabetics drive their cars into trees and wipe out buses of nuns all the time,” Fraze said. “My diabetic patients carry a card that says, ‘If I’m acting oddly, I’m diabetic. Please look into my blood sugar.’”
According to autopsy documents and emails between investigators obtained by the Post, Ma was seen entering the water while talking on her cellphone on Dec. 6. She sounded confused on a 911 call and was found in the water by a passing cyclist the next morning along the San Francisco Bay Trail, north of the Golf Club at Moffett Field.
Her visiting boyfriend, Isaac Smith, 24, reported her missing at 2:25 p.m. on Dec. 7, about four hours after her body was found. He told Mountain View police that he hadn’t seen her since 10:30 a.m. the day before.
Police have ruled out foul play and her autopsy showed no indication of sexual assault.
The excess water in her brain and lungs, as well as some mild scrapes on her forehead and body, were consistent with drowning, according to Santa Clara County Medical Examiner Joseph O’Hara.
O’Hara left Ma’s manner of death undetermined, declaring on March 28 that she had died by drowning, but that her reason for entering the water is unknown.
“Her reported confused state is highly suggestive of psychotic behavior and may explain her entry into the water,” O’Hara wrote. “Because her intent cannot be unequivocally determined, the manner of death is ruled as undetermined.”
O’Hara did not return a request for comment.
Fraze suggested that Ma could have been hypoglycemic rather than psychotic or suicidal, but said that her hypothesis didn’t contradict O’Hara’s conclusion that she had likely entered the water in a confused state and drowned.
“Hypoglycemia starves the brain,” Fraze said. “There are medical reasons that could explain her confusing actions.”
Fraze has practiced endocrinology for 37 years and is an adjunct professor at Stanford, but emphasized that her background is not in forensics and her knowledge of Ma’s death is limited to what she read in the Post and Ma’s autopsy report.
That report shows that Ma had slightly high blood sugar when she was autopsied, which Fraze said could indicate the Somogyi effect, a spike in blood sugar in response to hypoglycemia.
Coroner investigators were still puzzled over Ma’s death as recently as last week.
“I do not see how this is an accident…why would she completely undress and jump in the water?” O’Hara asked in an email to Santa Clara County Coroner Investigator Andrea Whelan on March 26. “Unless they mean that she was psychotic and drowned accidentally while hallucinating.”
Police have not yet released their findings on the case, but appear to have settled on the psychosis theory.
“The police think that the decedent may have been psychotic and drowned accidentally, however her comments on the 911 tape about ‘going into the water’ cannot be ignored,” Whelan wrote back to O’Hara on March 28. “The police are just not thinking this is a clear ‘suicide.’”
Other evidence shows that Ma was making plans for the future the day before she was found dead, according to an email to investigators from her mother, Li Chen.
She booked a January plane ticket from San Francisco to Munich, Germany on Dec. 6, Chen wrote in a Jan. 9 email to Whelan and Sunnyvale police Detective Matt Hutchison.
Ma was also planning to travel in January to Austin, Texas, where she graduated from the University of Texas with a computer science degree in 2016. Smith is a third-year math Ph.D. student there.
Investigators didn’t find records of suicidal threats or ideations from Ma, but were still searching her medical records the day that O’Hara signed her autopsy report. Caffeine was the only drug found in her system.
When Whelan asked Chen whether Ma had ever suffered sleepwalking or narcolepsy, she said no.
Chen suggested Ma could have fallen off her bicycle and dropped a medical device she wore for a glucose study into the water and drowned while trying to retrieve it.
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