Gunshots Killed Baylor Player

Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy died of gunshot wounds to the head, according to a preliminary autopsy report released Wednesday.

Dennehy's official cause of death is homicide, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas said in its report.

The one-page report was released Wednesday to Belinda Summers, a justice of the peace in McLennan County, where the body was found Friday.

Authorities had completed evidence collection in the field where the decomposed remains of Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy were found a few days ago.

A funeral service for Dennehy has been tentatively scheduled for mid-August in San Jose, Calif., near where he grew up. The funeral had originally been planned for next week, but Pastor Dick Bernal of the Jubilee Christian Center says he has been told that forensic work will continue through Thursday or Friday. A campus memorial service for Dennehy is being planned for September at Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university with 14,000 students.

The remains of Dennehy, a 6-foot-10 center who had been missing about six weeks, were found just a few miles away from campus in a grassy field off a road leading to a rock quarry.

Last week, police said they were searching sites given to them by Carlton Dotson, Dennehy's roommate and former teammate. Dotson, 21, was charged with Dennehy's death last week after police said he confessed to shooting Dennehy in the head. He remains jailed without bond in his home state of Maryland and awaits extradition to Texas sometime next month.

Dennehy's body was too decomposed to immediately determine whether he had been shot, Summers said. The head, found Sunday in the same field of tall grass and thick brush, appeared to have been moved away from the body by animals, she said.

The McLennan County Sheriff's Office declined to say if investigators found a gun and shell casings near the body in the rural area three miles south of Waco.

Dotson was arrested July 21 after calling 911, saying he needed help because he was hearing voices, authorities said. He told FBI agents that he shot Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. But after his arrest, Dotson told The Associated Press that he "didn't confess to anything."

Meanwhile, a day after basketball coach Dave Bliss addressed allegations of possible NCAA violations, Dennehy's roommate, Chris Turk, said that he was "unable to sit quietly as the university lies and denies all wrongdoing."

Baylor opened a new inquiry last week, prompted by claims from some of Dennehy's relatives and friends.

"Since the very beginning of my roommate's disappearance, it seems to me that Baylor and the coaching staff have done the best they could to simply wash their hands of the negative publicity," Turk said Tuesday.

A committee of three Baylor Law School professors will investigate allegations that an assistant coach told Dennehy his education and living expenses would be paid if he gave up his scholarship for a year. Baylor tuition and fees cost more than $17,000 a year.

The committee also will examine whether Dennehy received $1,200 to $1,800 from an assistant coach toward a car loan for his Chevrolet Tahoe.

Turk, who does not attend Baylor, said Dennehy "hinted" that one or more coaches helped him buy his vehicle. Turk said Dennehy told him that a coach paid for his vehicle repairs.

"In the time I spent with Patrick, it is very clear to me that not everything in Baylor sports was as it should be," Turk said. "... In my opinion, Baylor's active denial of all wrongdoing strays far from the Christian principles that the university is supposed to uphold."

Baylor athletics department spokesman Heath Nielsen said Tuesday that the university stands by Bliss' statements denying any knowledge of NCAA violations.

Dotson transferred to Baylor last year from Paris Junior College in East Texas. Dennehy, because of NCAA eligibility rules, had to sit out a year after transferring from New Mexico, where he was kicked off the team for losing his temper.

Dennehy's family reported him missing June 19, seven days after he was last seen on campus. Dennehy's vehicle was found abandoned in a Virginia Beach, Va., parking lot June 25.