Grad student whose body was found in Illinois River died by drowning

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The coroner’s report on Monday said the missing Illinois State University graduate student who was found dead in the Illinois River ten days after his disappearance had drowned.

25-year-old Jelani Day was reported missing by his family on August 25. He attends a campus near Bloomington as a speech pathology student, NBC News reported.

After his disappearance, his vehicle was spotted the next day and helped crews to pin their search near the river, north of Bloomington, according to the police.

The Bloomington police who handled the investigation said rescue personnel found his body floating in the Illinois River close to the city of Peru last Sept. 4.

The police furthered that on the morning of Aug. 24, the man was captured by a security video heading to a Bloomington cannabis dispensary, Beyond/Hello.

In a statement released last month, the police said it was his “last known location.”

Furthermore, the police said that the video showed the clothes Day was wearing and was later found inside his car. These include a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, light-colored shorts, black shoes, as well as a Detroit Lions baseball hat.

There were no traces of dispute, assault, wounds, natural disease, infection, and gunfire, or “significant drug intoxication,” said the LaSalle County Coroner Richard Ploch.

The missing case involving the man gained traction following the Gabby Petito case, a 22-year-old white woman who disappeared last Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, Carmen Bolden Day, Day’s mother, is looking at foul play as the possible cause of death of her child.

“He wasn’t depressed,” she said. “He didn’t have any kind of pressures that would make him want to escape from life. So I do feel as if there was someone involved.”

She demands the federal authorities to handle the investigation this month. The same call is made by the Nu Epsilon chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity at Alabama A&M University, of which Day was once a member.