Singapore's coroner's ruling Shane Todd committed suicide

A US engineer discovered executed in his Singapore apartment committed suicide, according to a Singapore coroner.

Shane Todd, 31, was fatally shot at his home in June 2012 while functioning for a govt research organisation.

His death was classified as a suicide, and yet his parents claimed he was murdered over a sensitive technology project.

“There’s no foul play,” the coroner ruled. The investigation has been described as “transparent and fair” by the United States.

According to the inquest, Mr Todd ended up dead of “asphyxia due to hanging.”

The verdict in the case, which drew a considerable amount of attention about After Todd’s parents challenged the police findings as well as campaigned for an investigation, is final and cannot be appealed.

Websites dedicated to suicide

Mr Todd had recently left a job at the Singapore Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a state-owned research organisation.

His parents claimed he was working on a sensitive semiconductor technology connection between two factors to China’s telecoms gigantic, Huawei, and that his death was the consequence of foul play related to the project.

Both Mr Todd’s former employer and Huawei, which was titled a potential threat to national security by a US Congressional committee last year due to concerns about links to China’s government and military, denied this, claiming they were implicated in informal talks on a project that never materialised.

The court also stated that the proposal had not been completed.”

Though it did, which I did not find,” District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt said, “the mentioned requirements show this would not have infringed overall export control laws, nor could this have been used it for military applications.”

“During his employment at the IME, the dead person was not in custody of sensitive information and valuable classified information,” he added.

Instead, the coroner concluded that Mr Todd committed suicide “beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Witnesses described Mr Todd, who had previously suffered from depression, as being under a huge amount of pressure in the weeks prior up to the end.

The investigator’s inquiry, that also organised in May, heard that throughout the days before he was discovered dead, an analysis of his computer revealed how he had decided to visit a number of suicide-related websites.The Todd family’s potential witness, a deputy lead investigator from Missouri in the United States, was also grilled during the investigation, leading him to change his stance that Shane Todd could be garrotted.

He retained that the 31-year-old was most likely murdered, contradicting the findings of 4 other experts, two Singaporeans and two Americans, who concluded that suicide was the most likely cause of death.”The investigation into Dr Todd’s death was thorough, fair, and transparent,” the US embassy said in a statement.

According to the statement, his family “was invited to participate in the having heard and was defined by seasoned Singapore legal counsel.”

Mr Todd’s mom and dad decided to withdraw their assistance for the Singapore investigation in May, citing a lack of trust in the investigation. They just weren’t present in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

“The investigation into Dr Todd’s death was thorough, fair, and transparent,” the US embassy said in a statement.

“It was clear that state was only intent on proving suicide, which is why we left,” Shane Todd’s father, Rick Todd, told the Associated Press last week.

“They never interviewed us, and the court made it clear that they will never explored the potential of murder.”