The cause of death has been revealed for the missing 53-year-old Chicago special education teacher whose lifeless body was found in Lake Michigan Monday afternoon.
Linda Brown’s death was ruled a suicide by drowning following an autopsy on Tuesday, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, FOX 32 reported.
No additional information was provided.
Brown’s body was recovered in the lake near the South Side of Chicago around noon after she vanished without a trace and was reported missing on Jan. 3, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Her husband, Antwon, said the pair had a quiet movie night at home before she went to bed early, but when he woke up the next morning, the Chicago Public Schools educator was nowhere to be found.
“I woke up at 8:45 a.m., and she was gone,” Antwon told the outlet, adding that he “broke down.”
After hours passed with no word from his wife, the shaken husband reported her missing to police.
Brown, a special education teacher at Robert Healy Elementary School, was last seen behind the wheel of a blue 2021 Honda Civic in the 4500 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Bronzeville, about two miles southwest of the White Sox’s Rate Field, police said.
She was reportedly en route to her weekly acupuncture appointment but never arrived.
Investigators discovered her abandoned car near East 35th Street and South Lake Park Avenue on Jan. 7 — just two miles from where she was last seen.
Police then recovered surveillance footage that showed Brown in the same area where her car was found.
She was captured on video around 3 a.m. the day she was reported missing, walking alone on a pedestrian bridge leading to the lakefront, her grief-stricken family told ABC 7.
While the reason Brown took her own life is unclear, Antwon said his wife of 11-years had taken a leave of absence from her job after struggling with mental health issues, but was set to return to work on Jan. 5.
“She has a little mental issues going on, and she took a leave of absence from her job to get help for that,” he told CBS Chicago last week.
“As school was getting closer, it was kind of getting worse, like the anxiety, the panic attacks.”
