Dennehy autopsy released

Assocoated Press

WACO, Texas (AP) - Gunshot wounds to the head are what killed Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy, according to a preliminary autopsy report released Wednesday.

Dennehy's official cause of death is homicide, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas said in its report.

Dennehy played two seasons at the University of New Mexico and transferred to Baylor in the spring of 2002.

The one-page report was released Wednesday morning to Belinda Summers, a justice of the peace in McLennan County, where the decomposed body was found Friday night in a grassy field four miles from campus. The 21-year-old had been missing about six weeks.

Investigators had searched earlier in the week at nearby gravel pits, a site police say was provided to them by Carlton Dotson, Dennehy's roommate and former teammate now charged with murder.

Dotson was arrested July 21 after telling FBI agents that he shot Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Dennehy was killed in the field where his body was found, according to the preliminary autopsy report. It does not specify how many times he was shot, whether he suffered any other wounds or the day he died. The complete autopsy was expected to take several more weeks.

Jessica De La Rosa, who dated Dennehy for two years, said she tries not to dwell on what authorities have told her about what they believe happened in mid-June in the field southeast of Waco.

"It's kind of hard for me to hear that something like that is what took his life," said De La Rosa, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M. "But it was barely a split second ... so I believe he didn't feel any pain."

Investigators believe the murder weapon was thrown in a body of water between McLennan County and the East Coast, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Baylor officials said a morning funeral service was scheduled for Aug. 7 at the Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose, Calif., near where he grew up.