By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -The man charged with supplying explosives used to bomb a California fertility clinic in May took his own life while in pretrial custody, the Los Angeles County medical examiner ruled in autopsy results made public on Thursday.
The coroner ruled the death on Tuesday of Daniel Park, 32, at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles to be a suicide caused by “blunt traumatic injuries” but gave no further details about the circumstances of his demise.
The Los Angeles Times, citing two unnamed sources, reported on Thursday that information gathered about the death shows Park climbed onto a surface and then jumped off a high balcony at the jail, fatally injuring himself.
A spokesperson for the medical examiner declined to comment on the Times’ story and said additional information would be contained in the final autopsy report, “which is not yet available as the investigation is ongoing.”
The federal Bureau of Prisons, in whose custody Park was held, declined to comment beyond a statement issued on Tuesday detailing how he was found unconscious that morning and was pronounced dead at a hospital after jail employees tried without success to resuscitate him.
Park was arrested in June following the May 17 bombing at the clinic in Palm Springs, approximately 100 miles (161 km) east of Los Angeles. The bombing killed one person, the primary suspect, Guy Bartkus, and injured several others.
Park was accused of obtaining 270 pounds (122 kg) of ammonium nitrate for Bartkus to use in the bomb and that he had shared Bartkus’ views.
Park was not in California at the time of the bombing and was detained in Poland by Polish authorities afterward. U.S. authorities took him into custody in New York.
The Bureau of Prisons said Park arrived at the Los Angeles facility on June 13 and was awaiting trial after being indicted for malicious destruction of property.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Christian Martinez; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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