Star D-II QB who went missing died of pneumonia

Published 5:00 am Friday, August 9, 2013

Cullen Finnerty, the former star college quarterback found dead in the Michigan woods in late May, died from pneumonia, complicated by oxycodone toxicity and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, according to a summary of the autopsy findings released Thursday by the Lake County Sheriff’s Department.

Finnerty played at Grand Valley State University, a Division II powerhouse, where he was thought to have won more games than any quarterback in college football history. He went missing after he went fishing by himself late on May 26 in Baldwin, Mich., and he was found nearly two days later, face down in a clearing about a half a mile west from where he docked his pontoon boat. Finnerty, 30, is survived by a wife and two children.

How he died was not explained for more than two months. Finnerty had been taking oxycodone for severe back pain.

“A likely sequence of events on the night of death includes anxiety, disorientation and paranoia from being alone in the woods,” the report said. “Those emotions could have been exacerbated by an elevated oxycodone level combined with CTE.”

Finnerty, the report continued, became incapacitated, vomited and inhaled the vomit, which caused the pneumonia. His brain was studied at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University, which found he had Stage II CTE. There are four stages.

At Grand Valley State, Finnerty won three national titles. He later spent time with the Baltimore Ravens and the Denver Broncos and played football overseas. In recent years, after his playing career ended, he went into medical sales. Friends and family are hosting a memorial golf scramble in Brighton, Mich., his hometown, later this month.

Marketplace