Ex-LAPD Chris Dorner’s Remains Identified

15 Feb, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Investigators determined fairly quickly that the burned human remains found after a shootout in Southern California mountains are those of Christopher Dorner, the ex-police officer suspected in a rampage that left four people dead. But the answer to a second question will likely prove more elusive – how did he die?

Evidence such as descriptions from witnesses and the discovery of personal items, including a driver’s license, already led authorities to figure that it was Dorner who exchanged heavy gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies at a cabin Tuesday, killing one officer. Dorner never left as the cabin as it went up in flames.

But on Thursday the issue was officially put to rest when sheriff-coroner’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller announced that dental examination had definitively shown the remains were Dorner’s.

Virtually no other information was released. An autopsy report on the charred body was still being completed, and toxicology tests typically take several weeks to return results.

That means questions are likely to linger over which of three ways Dorner may have died: Was it the hail of gunfire that came from the deputies outside? Was it suicide by the single shot that was heard from inside the cabin as the flames began to rise? Or was it the flames themselves that engulfed both Dorner and the cabin?

The cause of the flames has remained in question in the days that followed Dorner’s death on Tuesday.

AP

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