Authorities in Australia have determined that a Canadian tourist who died in January drowned after sustaining injuries from a dingo attack.
Piper James, 19, of Campbell River, B.C., was found dead on Jan. 19 on a beach on K’gari, a sand island off the coast of Australia’s Queensland state, around 250 kilometres north of Brisbane.
“Piper died as a result of drowning in the setting of multiple injuries, due to, or as a consequence of a dingo attack,” a spokesperson for the Coroners Court of Queensland told CBC News in an emailed statement.
The Coroners Court of Queensland confirmed late Thursday that an assigned forensic pathologist had determined James’s cause of death and the conclusion was accepted by the investigating coroner.
James had been travelling around Australia since October with a friend, also from Campbell River, and had found a job on K’gari, a world heritage site that’s a popular destination for backpackers and other tourists.
Her body was discovered surrounded by a group of about 10 dingoes.
Preliminary autopsy results in January also found that James likely drowned. In addition, those results noted that James had both pre- and post-mortem dingo bite marks, indicating she had been forced into the water by the pack.
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A spokesperson with the Coroners Court of Queensland said at the time of the preliminary autopsy results that the pre-mortem bites “are not likely to have caused immediate death. There are extensive post-mortem dingo bite marks.”
The animals involved in the incident were subsequently deemed “an unacceptable public safety risk” and eight of the 10 have since been euthanized.
The spokesperson for the Coroners Court of Queensland said the investigation into James’s death continues, but no further information is available at the moment.
