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NORTH PORT, Fla. – The Gabby Petito autopsy finding that she died of homicide by strangulation indicates a likelihood of domestic violence and deadly intent at the Wyoming campsite where an FBI-led investigation uncovered her remains last month, experts tell Fox News.
Her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who shared the campsite with her before driving back to Florida alone and ultimately disappearing himself, has been named a person of interest in her death and is wanted on a federal bank card fraud warrant.
Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue announced Tuesday that Petito died by “manual strangulation/throttling,” meaning she’d been killed by hand and not with an item like a rope or chain.
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Dr. Dan Field, a board-certified emergency physician and an expert witness in strangulation and homicide cases, said killing someone by strangulation is a long, deliberate process.
“I [testified in] a murder case in Florida, where the defense was trying to put forth the theory that it was a moment of passion — and so the question I was asked is how long does it take for strangulation to kill somebody?” he told Fox News Digital. “The numbers are very, very specific.”
It takes roughly between 62 and 157 seconds, he said.
“And then the question the prosecution has is, does that sound like a ‘moment of passion’ — 62 seconds?” he said.
Victims can lose consciousness within the first five to 10 seconds from when a stranglehold his applied, according to Field – from a combination of lack of oxygen, reflexes and the obstruction of blood flow. Seizure can occur between 11 and 17 seconds. By 30 seconds, they lose control of other organs.
But death takes longer.
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“It is surprisingly quick, but it’s not a moment,” Field said. “It’s not a flap. It’s not the pulling of a trigger.”
And more often than not, such attacks are deliberate, he said. While the sequence…
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Source : foxnews
