Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s final report reaffirms no foul play in Bob Saget’s death

By Gregory Lemos

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office issued its final report into the death of Bob Saget on Tuesday and said it will comply with a court ordered permanent injunction blocking the release of additional details of the comedian’s untimely death.

“Yesterday, a court order was entered prohibiting the release of certain materials gathered during the course of OCSO’s investigation into the death of Bob Saget. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office will comply with the order, while remaining committed to transparency and following the law regarding access to public records,” OCSO said in an email.

Saget’s family filed a lawsuit last month against Orange County’s sheriff and the medical examiner’s office, requesting that some investigation records related to his death be exempt from being revealed publicly. A Florida judge granted a permanent injunction Monday blocking the release of additional records related to the death investigation, CNN previously reported.

According to the OCSO’s final incident report on Saget’s death, also released Tuesday, Saget’s family requested security at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida conduct a wellness check on Saget on his checkout date of January 9 after they were unable to reach him. Hotel security contacted local authorities after finding Saget “unresponsive and cold to the touch.”

Responding authorities found the room in order with “no evidence of a struggle, any type of foul play, or that anyone else was in the room at any time during his stay,” the report says.

“Mr. Saget was lying on his back on the right side of the bed, partially covered by the sheet and bedspread, with his left arm lying loosely across his torso and his right arm by his side. The sheets, bedspread, and pillowcases on the bed were white and there were no signs of blood or bodily fluids on them or anywhere else in the suite,” the report says, adding Saget appeared to have slight swelling and a bruise over his left eye.

The report notes that while the door between the room adjoining Saget’s was unlocked, the occupying guests checked out two days before and there was no evidence of entry afterward. The report says Saget’s room was opened shortly after 2:00 a.m. local time on January 9, a time consistent with his departure from his show in Jacksonville that night, and not opened again until around 4:00 p.m. by hotel security staff coming to check on him.

“No one entered or left his room, until security entered that afternoon at the request of his family,” the report says.

Four legally prescribed medications were found in Saget’s luggage, the report says.

An autopsy conducted the following day by Chief Medical Examiner Joshua Stephany found “a fracture at the base of Mr. Saget’s skull, the evidence of bleeding around the brain, and demonstrated the transfer of force that broke the orbital bones at the front of the skull.”

Stephany “explained that the amount of force necessary to cause the fracture, coupled with the fact that the skin on the back of the head was still intact, led him to believe that the injury was most likely caused by ‘something hard, covered by something soft,’ and he gave, as an example, a fall onto a carpeted floor,” the report says.

Stephany concluded such a blow would have “stunned” Saget and caused symptoms such as dizziness, confusion and slurred speech. Stephany told investigators Saget would not have been able to drive the two hours back from Jacksonville he reportedly did in his rental car after sustaining such a traumatic brain injury, the report says.

Following the autopsy, investigators returned to the hotel to re-examine the scene “to locate specific places or items in the room that could have caused the trauma.” Nothing definitive was identified, the report said. Stephany noted Saget’s head injury likely occurred within a few hours of his death but could have occurred in the days prior, the report says. A number of interviews conducted by authorities with people who interacted with Saget in his final days produced no evidence of drug or alcohol use or any behavior out of the ordinary, the report says.

A photo taken at the request of the valet at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando in the early morning hours on January 9 shows no visual evidence of injury or trauma to Saget’s face, the report says.

The cause of death was determined to be blunt head trauma. The manner of death was determined to be an accident, the report says.

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CNN’s Joe Sutton contributed to this report.