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Jeremy Briese, Mariposa County Sheriff, shows a map where the missing family was found dead
Photo: Craig Kohlruss / AP
A good two months after the mysterious death of a young family on a hiking trail in California, investigators assume a heat death.
The investigation and the autopsy suggested hyperthermia and presumably dehydration as the cause of death, said Sheriff Jeremy Briese in Mariposa County.
The temperatures rose to 42 degrees Celsius that day, and there was hardly any shade on the hiking trail, the investigators said.
The family also had hardly any water left.
Briese spoke of a "tragic incident" caused by the weather.
Born in England, John Gerrish (45), his wife Ellen Chung (31) and their one-year-old daughter set out on a day hike in the Sierra Nevada mountain region southwest of Yosemite National Park in mid-August.
The bodies were found less than three kilometers from the family's parked car.
Her eight-year-old dog was probably also killed in the heat.
The death of the family puzzled investigators for weeks.
Third party fault, suicide or drugs were excluded.
Also examined were possible poison gases from a disused mine and poisonous algae in streams in the region.
At times, the authorities closed the trail to visitors.
Gerrish, a software engineer, and his wife had moved from San Francisco to the mountainous rural area during the corona pandemic.
They wanted to live close to nature, friends said according to US media reports.
kim / dpa / AP