Massachusetts Institute of Technology junior Daniel “Dong” Mun, missing since Dec. 5, has been identified as the man found in the Charles River near the Massachusetts Avenue bridge on Saturday afternoon, according to the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.
An autopsy conducted Tuesday morning determined the cause of death as drowning.
“Evidence uncovered by state police detectives assigned to the district attorney’s office suggests that the manner of death was suicide,” according to a press release from District Attorney Daniel Conley’s office. The medical examiner did not find any external trauma to Mun’s body.
The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper, reported in its Tuesday edition that Mun’s father and the MIT director of Security and Campus Police Services said Mun left a note on his computer that indicated he was depressed and was saying goodbye. But The Tech also reported that Mun’s roommate said he “was ‘in his normal demeanor’ in the days before he went missing.”
Arthur Jones, director of the MIT News Office, could not provide further details about the note.
The Tech reported that the body had been “tentatively identified” as Mun after state police found Mun’s MIT ID card in a pocket on the body. Dental records confirmed the body’s identification.
Jones said Mun’s roommate and the president of the Chi Phi fraternity chapter at MIT, of which Mun was a member, will hold a memorial service today. MIT Senior Associate Dean for Students Robert Randolph, who is also involved in planning the memorial, stressed that the service will remain small.
“We’re keeping that pretty low-key,” he said. “It’s for friends and his fraternity brothers.”
Jones said he expects Mun’s parents, who are from Missouri, to attend the service, along with Mun’s brother, who lives in Washington, D.C.
Jones said MIT is offering counseling to any students who wish to take advantage of it, as “quite a number” of students did when Mun first disappeared in December. He said it is “too early to tell” how many students have sought counseling since the body was discovered on Saturday and MIT informed students of the counseling availability.