The Amador County Sheriff’s Office said the death of Philip Haney, a former Department of Homeland Security official during the Obama administration, is still under investigation and has not been conclusively ruled as a suicide.
“Unfortunately, there was misinformation immediately being put out that we have determined Mr. Haney’s death to be a suicide. This is not the case. We are currently in the beginning phase of our investigation, and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr. Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate,” the office announced Monday night in a press statement.
“No determination will be made until all evidence is examined and analyzed,” it added.
Haney, 66, was found dead with a bullet wound on Friday morning about 40 miles east of Sacramento, California, in a park-and-ride open area immediately adjacent to state Highway 16 and near state Highway 124, according to law enforcement authorities.
“Highway 16 is a busy state highway and used as a main travel route to and from Sacramento. The location is less than three miles from where [Haney] was living,” the sheriff’s office statement explained.
Sheriff’s investigators conducted a neighborhood canvas and interviewed Haney’s RV park neighbors on the day of the incident. They also examined “key areas for any video surveillance that may exist from that time.” A forensic autopsy has been scheduled to be performed by forensic pathologists from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office.
“Additionally, we have reached out to our law enforcement partners in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, and a laptop that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV,” the sheriff’s office said, adding that authorities are also in possession of his vehicle, RV, and the firearm located at the scene.
The FBI was called to process these items as evidence as well, and the investigation is still active.
Haney was a government whistleblower during his time at the DHS. He testified in 2016 before the Senate Judiciary Committee that his agency ordered him to erase hundreds of files on people with connections to Islamist terrorist organizations, arguing that several terrorist attacks could have been stopped if certain files were not deleted.
