Bob Saget’s Case Isn’t ‘Technically Closed’: Official

Bob Saget attends the "Shameless" FYC event at Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 6, 2019. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

The investigation into Bob Saget’s cause of death is not technically closed, said an official with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

In response to a question about the status of the investigation, an Orange County sheriff’s spokesperson told CNN this week that “it’s actually not quite that simple.”

“There is no active investigation happening,” the spokesperson added. “But the case is not technically closed.”

Saget, 65, was found dead in his Florida hotel room in January. The Orange County Medical Examiner’s office said that Saget died of blunt head trauma.

“It is in my opinion that the death of Robert Saget, a 65-year-old white male found unresponsive in a hotel room, is the result of blunt head trauma,” Orange County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua D. Stephany said in a statement last month. “It is the most probable that the decedent suffered an unwitnessed fall backwards and struck the posterior aspect of his head. The manner of death is accident.”

However, after the report was released, several doctors told media outlets that it appeared that Saget suffered severe head trauma and noted that a number of questions remain unanswered.

Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, an emergency physician and concussion expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center said that such a severe injury that was described in the report would not have likely been ignored by Saget. Orange County officials said Saget hit his head and then went to sleep before he was found dead.

“It’s like an egg cracking,” he told the New York Times. “You hit it in one spot, and it can crack from the back to the front.” The injury, Dr. Bazarian said, would have left him confused or possibly unconscious.

In mid-February, a judge temporarily blocked local officials from releasing some records related to his death following a request from Saget’s family.

Saget’s wife and other family members filed a lawsuit against local Orange County officials, saying the records should only be released to them.