CA - Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, daughter, 1 & dog, suspicious death hiking area, Aug 2021 #3

[RedHaus]

Is there an urge to undress if you have heat exhaustion? Would there be vomiting if poisoned? Not sure we are privy to what was found at the scene. Moo

You know, @MissUnderstood, I had the same thought about the question you pose as I was considering the possibility of Carbofuran poisoning perhaps having stumbled on a grow 0p - or perhaps just Oski if a trail was baited for animals. Why would LE have treated the scene as a HazMat scene (as reported) without the presence of some external tell tale signs such as vomit or bleeding? You'd think they would have had to have seen something from a distance first to prepare?

 

[RedHaus]

I can't see growers hiking up and down Savage-Lundy to access their op.

RSBM
Good points, @eptichka83. But from what I've read about Carbofuran, there is a dose response curve as there is for most toxins. With this toxin, it appears to affect the timeframe for an animal (including human) to respond to exposure, as well as response severity. In the Audubon article I posted, it speaks to the "Cycle of Death"... the initial consumer (say a coyote) dies quickly, perhaps at the scene of a bait trap. Then the carcass is eaten by a Bald Eagle, who is only able to fly 1/2 mile away. Then that carcass is eaten by another scavenger (e.g. vulture) and that animal gets 2 miles away. As the exposure to Carbofuran travels the food chain, the time for survival is extended as compared to the index case.

So that is a long way of saying, perhaps the family (or Oski) was exposed to Carbofuran down near the river or on the HC ATV road but the dose was such that they didn't feel well but were able to continue until their time was up on the SL trail.

p.s. I am trained in environmental epidemiology so that is why this scenario is suddenly so fascinating to me.

 

[Rocky Mountain Hi]

And I wouldn’t hike back out until the last uphill slog was in shade and the temps had cooled. I’m not that masochistic. I’d stay down by the river until dusk if necessary.

This idea has been posted before. But the fact is, that in such high temps, it doesn't cool off to functional temps until late at night. (Living in the Southwest, I've tracked this.) Sure, at dusk, you'd at least eliminate those triple-digit peak temps on the south-facing trail, but hiking back up those switchbacks in heat in the 90's or even high 80's with inadequate water and carrying one, probably two, dependents would be no more realistically doable than in the afternoon IMO. Plus, at dusk, as night was falling, you'd be stuck hiking part of an unfamiliar trail in the dark. I don't think it's a workable solution. The best "solution" is to not put yourself into a risky situation in the first place, of course, as others have said.

I'm still curious as to what hike they did the weekend before, if they hiked every weekend, as has been stated earlier in the thread. One or more of their friends must know what hikes they'd done in the area that August....? There's so much potentially enlightening info we're not privvy to. Maybe their friends are too devastated to talk publicly about any of it. The media with their demanding ways can be a pain to deal with. But I'm curious to know if this particular hike was more strenuous than the others they'd chosen. Didn't someone say, that one of Ellen's IG accounts had mentioned, that they'd had close calls with hot conditions on "adventures" before?

 

[Rocky Mountain Hi]

Is there an urge to undress if you have heat exhaustion? Would there be vomiting if poisoned? Not sure we are privy to what was found at the scene. Moo

Come to think of it, heat stroke tends to cause vomiting, but there was no mention of evidence of that at the scene.

 

[Rocky Mountain Hi]

I totally agree with you. I’m coming around to thinking toxic algae might be more likely than I originally thought. We already knew there were toxic algae blooms in the area waters b/c there were warnings. But now we have a positive sample for the VFDF in the area. Obviously we don’t know if they interacted with it, but it’s a big deal IMO that this Anatoxin-A is indeed a possibility.

As someone mentioned earlier, it would be very useful and interesting to know if they typically filtered water while hiking and if they had a water filter with them that day. Filters wouldn’t filter out toxic algae, but they might not have known that. I sure didn’t!

Or even worse, if they were desperate and drank the water unfiltered or just didn’t understand the risks of doing that.

I’m still trying to figure out if the toxicology will tell if there was Anatoxin-A in their systems or not. Because if not how will they ever know if that’s what killed them? I also believe the heat likely played a role.

Here's another potentially important piece of info that we're not privvy to: did LE find water filters in their gear on the hike? It's a good quesiton. They might be able to test the filters for residual algae or water droplets, IDK.

 

[woods]

Come to think of it, heat stroke tends to cause vomiting, but there was no mention of evidence of that at the scene.

Nauseau and vomiting may occur with heatstroke, but I don't believe they’re required to occur.

 

[happyday]

Nauseau and vomiting may occur with heatstroke, but I don't believe they’re required to occur.

Right. And I feel like it would be impossible to know whether any of them vomited at some point somewhere or not. They could have been sick off the trail along the way up and still made it further to where they were found. Absence of vomit on the scene doesn’t tell much IMO.

 

[LifeIsAMystery]

Nauseau and vomiting may occur with heatstroke, but I don't believe they’re required to occur.

IME I was nauseous, confused and dizzy but did not vomit.

 

[happyday]

@Runswithdogs can Anatoxin-A be found in necropsy of a dog? I’ve been looking and mostly what I’m getting is that stomach contents can be analyzed but it’s complicated? Mostly I’m seeing that diagnosis usually comes from neurological symptoms observations before death and then testing of the water source they were in? That sure doesn’t help us here…

 

[Sunshine95]

Regarding them being close together perhaps they were so overtaken by grief when the dog or baby perished that they couldn’t function. Crying, being devastated I imagine would further dehydrate and exhaust them on top of the heat. Perhaps the two grieved together until maybe the father began failing- mom then tore herself away to try and get help but the prolonged time of grieving made her unable to make it far. I hope they didn’t suffer long.

 

[NSamuelle]

This idea has been posted before. But the fact is, that in such high temps, it doesn't cool off to functional temps until late at night. (Living in the Southwest, I've tracked this.) Sure, at dusk, you'd at least eliminate those triple-digit peak temps on the south-facing trail, but hiking back up those switchbacks in heat in the 90's or even high 80's with inadequate water and carrying one, probably two, dependents would be no more realistically doable than in the afternoon IMO. Plus, at dusk, as night was falling, you'd be stuck hiking part of an unfamiliar trail in the dark. I don't think it's a workable solution. The best "solution" is to not put yourself into a risky situation in the first place, of course, as others have said.

I'm still curious as to what hike they did the weekend before, if they hiked every weekend, as has been stated earlier in the thread. One or more of their friends must know what hikes they'd done in the area that August....? There's so much potentially enlightening info we're not privvy to. Maybe their friends are too devastated to talk publicly about any of it. The media with their demanding ways can be a pain to deal with. But I'm curious to know if this particular hike was more strenuous than the others they'd chosen. Didn't someone say, that one of Ellen's IG accounts had mentioned, that they'd had close calls with hot conditions on "adventures" before?

You make a good point about switchbacks in the dark - there are some steep drop offs! They couldn’t have waited until it was cool enough to navigate them comfortably, because it would be too dark to navigate them safely. Any moderately experienced hiker would also build in time for sprained ankles, etc., and would make sure they had a grace period of sunlight by which to navigate.

 

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Willing to sound like a broken record here: even if they were poisoned by water-- which we have no evidence they were-- why were they on this trail in summer heat with a baby and dog? Yes, to climate change heating things up, but have we addressed the epidemic of amateurs who don't fully understand what it means to be expert? I am not bashing the Gerrish Chungs. This is about them and all the recent heat deaths. My opinion is that we have a societal problem of over-confident tech users who don't understand Mother Nature. At first I thought it was younger people, but now I believe, it's all ages. A weather app, a trail app, an Apple watch, Instagram, GPS can only teach you so much. Experience with experienced people is invaluable. Unless the real reasons for these deaths are made clear, we will have more and more of them. I hope in the end others can learn as much as we have here about safe hiking, dog safely, and climate change heat.

 

[swedeheart]

Lightning possibly caused death of family hiking near Yosemite

Authorities are now looking into whether lightning strikes caused the death of a family found dead along a popular wildflower trail near Yosemite last month.

 

[minazoe]

the deaths are mysterious. doesn't weather radar show all the hits ? maybe not the underground ones...? but seismology ..doesn't it register something like ground lightning? I hope they find out what has happened, very sad and hope it's solved soon.

 

[Curious_in_NC]

I’m inclined to think the bodies did not test positive for Anatoxin-A because the sheriff said they have some toxicology results but no COD yet - I think Anatoxin-A (or more accurately, its metabolites or however it shows up on tox) would be one of the first things they’d test for, so those results would be in after 2+ weeks.

Of course, they could have a positive result and be awaiting further tox before declaring COD, but then why not mention the positive result (which would be a matter of public health)?

I was intrigued by the chemistry of Anatoxin-A, as I did research on somewhat related tropane-like muscarinic receptor drugs a number of years ago. Anatoxin-A is highly selective for the nicotinic receptor and reacts irreversibly with it causing its neurotoxic effects.

Detecting it in tox tests is not straightforward. There don't appear to be reference standards or standard methods readily available. More importantly, it is not easily distinguishable from phenylalanine, which has the same molecular weight and similar chromatographic properties. What this means is that to confirm its presence, more sophisticated analytical instruments, like LC/tandem mass spectrometry, are needed than would be used in standard tox screening.

These two references concern detecting it in dogs but I think the same would also apply to people. They detected it in the stomach contents. I would presume that was done because it's reactivity makes it undetectable in blood samples. JMOO

Fatal Neurotoxicosis in Dogs Associated with Tychoplanktic, Anatoxin-a Producing Tychonema sp. in Mesotrophic Lake Tegel, Berlin
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

 

[happyday]

Dangerous toxic algae is found upstream from where Snapchat engineer and his family were found dead | Daily Mail Online

“Friday's closure has further raised suspicions that the family have been fatally-poisoned from drinking water, although officials are still waiting to receive toxicology reports.”

Yeah the DM article the other one seems to have gotten their info from is probably more accurate. It does seem like their leading theory is that toxic algae killed them. I’ll admit I dismissed the algae at first, but I think it’s more likely now that the specific kind of toxic algae that is fatal very quickly (Anatoxin-A) was found in the area. I’ve been looking into it and OMG I’m horrified—it is pretty terrible. I truly hope they didn’t drink that water.

 

[lotus777]

<snip>But I'm curious to know if this particular hike was more strenuous than the others they'd chosen. Didn't someone say, that one of Ellen's IG accounts had mentioned, that they'd had close calls with hot conditions on "adventures" before?

One of her IG posts on trekking the Himalayas mentions how the altitude started to get to her but she pressed on. There doesn't seem to be any indication on her IG of close calls related to heat.

 

[Seattle1]

Lightning strikes surface as another possibility for the mysterious death of California family - The San Francisco Times

Sept 5, 2021

[..]

Another possibility has surfaced – this time, lightning strikes – the New York Times feature on the family said.

The Times reported that law enforcement is “investigating possible lightning strikes in the area” when the family members were found dead.

The National Weather Service said being hit by lightning is “primarily an injury to the nervous system, often with brain injury and nerve injury. Serious burns seldom occur.” Death caused by lightning strikes can be caused by cardiac arrest. While deaths are rare, the 1989 to 2018 data from the weather service said 10 percent of people struck by lightning died. Per year, there is an average of 43 fatalities in the country.

Some of the possibilities that caused the death of the family have already been eliminated, like acute trauma like gunshot wounds and stabbing, according to the autopsy results. Toxic gasses from a mine yard were also ruled out, SFGATE reported.

 

[lotus777]

Willing to sound like a broken record here: even if they were poisoned by water-- which we have no evidence they were-- why were they on this trail in summer heat with a baby and dog? Yes, to climate change heating things up, but have we addressed the epidemic of amateurs who don't fully understand what it means to be expert? I am not bashing the Gerrish Chungs. This is about them and all the recent heat deaths. My opinion is that we have a societal problem of over-confident tech users who don't understand Mother Nature. At first I thought it was younger people, but now I believe, it's all ages. A weather app, a trail app, an Apple watch, Instagram, GPS can only teach you so much. Experience with experienced people is invaluable. Unless the real reasons for these deaths are made clear, we will have more and more of them. I hope in the end others can learn as much as we have here about safe hiking, dog safely, and climate change heat.

Completely agree. I can see how an inexperienced hiker could think "I have AllTrails and water so I'll be fine." Not at all saying that's what happened in this case, but as a general rule over-reliance on technology and misinformation or assumptions (like thinking water or being fit can prevent heat stroke) can be the beginning of a bad scenario.

 

[NSamuelle]

I was intrigued by the chemistry of Anatoxin-A, as I did research on somewhat related tropane-like muscarinic receptor drugs a number of years ago. Anatoxin-A is highly selective for the nicotinic receptor and reacts irreversibly with it causing its neurotoxic effects.

Detecting it in tox tests is not straightforward. There don't appear to be reference standards or standard methods readily available. More importantly, it is not easily distinguishable from phenylalanine, which has the same molecular weight and similar chromatographic properties. What this means is that to confirm its presence, more sophisticated analytical instruments, like LC/tandem mass spectrometry, are needed than would be used in standard tox screening.

These two references concern detecting it in dogs but I think the same would also apply to people. They detected it in the stomach contents. I would presume that was done because it's reactivity makes it undetectable in blood samples. JMOO

Fatal Neurotoxicosis in Dogs Associated with Tychoplanktic, Anatoxin-a Producing Tychonema sp. in Mesotrophic Lake Tegel, Berlin
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

This is great information! Not to get too off-topic but I did research on phenylalanine (phenylketonuria) and never knew this.