Officials confirm Shuman-Moore's death a suicide

By Caitlin Carmody

At a press conference in Des Moines Wednesday, representatives from the Grinnell Police Department, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and the State Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that Grinnell student Paul Shuman-Moore ’09 committed suicide. The official cause of death was listed as drowning.

“In this particular case there is absolutely no indication of evidence that Mr. Shuman-Moore was the victim of a homicide,” Grinnell Chief of Police Jody Matherly said. “All indications are that he was a talented, well-liked yet troubled young man who took his own life.”

Matherly said that Shuman-Moore’s hands and feet were “loosely bound” with duct tape. and that examinations indicated the bindings were self-applied. Police recovered a knife at the scene and a slit had been cut in the pool cover where entry would have been possible.

Responding to inquiries about why the initial search in September had failed to locate Shuman-Moore’s body, Matherly said that the country club area had been searched twice and that search dogs had gone near the pool.

“Simply put, it was missed and we certainly don’t place blame on anybody for that being missed,” Matherly said. "It’s a fact of life that things can be missed, and in fact it appears it was."

A memorial for Shuman-Moore will be held this Saturday at the Resurrection Lutheran Church in Chicago. College administrators said a memorial would also be held in Grinnell but further details have not been released.