According to People Authorities announced that the body of Netflix engineer Yohanes Kidane, who had been reported missing last month, was found in San Francisco Bay.
In a news release, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said that its coroner division was contacted on Aug. 29 by the California Highway Patrol upon “the discovery of an “unconscious/unresponsive person located within the San Francisco Bay waters northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge by a passing boat. ”
The sheriff’s office added that the individual was pronounced dead by paramedics after his body was recovered. “The remains exhibited signs of advanced decomposition, prolonged exposure to the aquatic environment and appreciable depredation,” the statement said.
With no identification on the individual and the remains being “unidentifiable and unknown,” an investigation followed, authorities said, which led to the deceased person being “positively scientifically identified,” as Yohanes Stefanos Kidane two days later.
The sheriff’s office statement detailed that his next of kin were then notified about the discovery and his death.
According to the statement, a forensic postmortem examination that took place the day after Yohanes’ body was identified and determined his cause of death “to be from blunt impact injuries with drowning as a significant contributing condition. The mode of death was determined to be suicide.”
The statement concluded: “The Marin County Sheriff’s Office and personnel of the Coroner Division offers our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Kidane.”
As reported by KRON 4, Yohanes, 22, had recently moved to San Jose after graduating from Cornell University to work as a Netflix software engineer.
Police said that he went missing on Aug. 14 after getting into an Uber at around 7:15 p.m. local time, per an NBC News report last month. In an Aug. 19 interview with NBC Dateline, Yohanes’ older brother, Yosief Kidane, told the outlet that he had last spoken to his brother on Aug. 13 and that his sister had noticed that Yohanes’ phone location was at the Golden Gate Bridge on the evening Aug. 14 and remained unchanged the following day.
“She’d been calling, trying to see what he’s doing. He never picked up,” Yosief told Dateline. “She calls me, wakes me up before I start work, and we start calling his phone, calling friends, trying to see where he could be.”
He added that he contacted authorities to do a wellness check at Yohanes’ apartment. It turned out that the Netflix engineer was not at his residence or at his job.
According to CBS Bay Area Yohanes’ cell phone, wallet and backpack were later discovered at the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center.
In the same interview, Yosief had described his brother as his “best friend,” who had “always been right by my side,”
The brothers were born and raised in Rochester, New York after their parents emigrated from Eritrea to the United States.
Yosief told NBC Dateline that his brother was “one of the best engineers out of his class at Cornell,” and said that Yohanes was excited about working for Netflix; he had only been at the company for two weeks.
The San Jose Police Department did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for additional information.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
