LOS ANGELES: Gabby Petito, the young woman who died on an Instagram-chronicled road trip across the United States with her boyfriend, was strangled to death, the local coroner said Tuesday.
The body of the 22-year-old lay in the wilderness of Wyoming for up to a month before it was found in mid-September, Dr Brent Blue, coroner for Teton County said.
"We hereby find the cause and manner of death to be: the cause of death by strangulation, and manner is homicide," he said.
"Our initial determination is that the body was in the wilderness for three to four weeks.
Petito's family filed a missing person report on September 11 after she mysteriously vanished during a road trip with partner Brian Laundrie, who returned home to Florida without her.
The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for Laundrie, describing him as a "person of interest". Laundrie remains at large. -- AFP