The grisly cause of death for Bryan Vasquez, a 12-year-old New Orleans boy found dead after he disappeared earlier this month, has been revealed.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said that Bryan, who was nonverbal, drowned after suffering blunt force trauma from an alligator.
He was last seen alive on Aug. 14, slipping out of his bedroom window around 5 a.m., WDSU reported. Less than a hour later, and not far from his family’s home, security video obtained by the station captured him wandering around wearing nothing but an adult diaper.
The pre-teen’s disappearance sparked a desperate two-week search, which culminated in the discovery his body on Tuesday. Police said a drone ultimately located his remains in a lagoon in the city’s Michoud neighborhood, not far from where Bryan lived.
Kirkpatrick said she has since requested the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries address the aggressive gators in the region where Bryan’s body was recovered. She said she had also ordered an internal affairs investigation into why it took authorities more than five hours to respond to the initial 911 call regarding the boy’s disappearance.
A spokesperson for the Vasquez family told WDSU that authorities obtained a search warrant for the cellphones that belong to the boy’s parents. Kirkpatrick did not say why, only that it’s not “an unusual step for us to take a look at everything.”
