TAMPA -- Former Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy and his wife, grieving over the death of their 18-year-old son James, left Tampa on Friday to spend the Christmas holiday with family in Indianapolis.
But the Dungys will return here early next week to bury James Dungy, long a fixture on the sidelines at Bucs games, in a service open to the public.
As investigators continued to withhold details of Dungy's death, his family planned a Tuesday morning funeral service inside a church that holds 5,200 people. The public is invited to the 11 a.m. funeral at Idlewild Baptist Church, 18371 N Dale Mabry Highway in Lutz.
"They're hurting -- as we would expect them to be -- but hopeful," he said, "because they know not only where James is, but they know one day there will be a great family reunion with him again."
Echoing what Hillsborough Sheriff's investigators said a day earlier, an associate Hillsborough County medical examiner concluded after an autopsy that James Dungy's death was an "apparent suicide."
But Dr. Jacqueline Lee will not rule on the exact cause of death until she sees the results of toxicology and tissue tests. It typically takes four to six weeks for those tests to be completed.
Dick Bailey, office manager for the medical examiner's office, stressed that such tests are standard procedure. A toxicology test would show evidence of foreign substances in Dungy's body, anything from caffeine to illegal drugs.
The fact that Lee is waiting for the tests does not mean the autopsy didn't already indicate how Dungy killed himself, according to the Medical Examiner's office.
"We do complete tests on all autopsies," Bailey said. "It doesn't matter who the person is. The only difference with this case is, we're getting a lot of calls from the media."
Dungy's girlfriend, 18-yearold Antoinette Anderson, called 911 about 1:30 a.m. Thursday after finding him unresponsive in his Lutz apartment, according to the Sheriff's Office.
Sheriff's investigators would not say Friday what they found when they arrived at Dungy's apartment in the Campus Lodge complex or speculate on what might have led Dungy to kill himself. They also did not release Anderson's 911 call.
On the evening of Oct. 21, inside the Lutz apartment, he swallowed four pills of hydrocodone and nine to 10 pills of naproxen, according to a sheriff's report.
Hydrocodone is an addictive narcotic used for pain relief. Naproxen is an anti-inflammatory, non-prescription drug used to reduce pain, inflammation, and stiffness caused by conditions including osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. It is the active ingredient in Aleve.
Dungy called 911 to say he took the pills because he was depressed, and he thought he had overdosed, according to the incident report. Paramedics took him to University Community Hospital.
A Hillsborough sheriff's deputy completed a report to have Dungy evaluated at UCH under the Baker Act, a 1971 Florida law that empowers officers to seek mental evaluations for people likely to harm themselves or others.
But sheriff's officials did not release the deputy's report Friday, and Dungy's medical records are sealed under medical privacy laws. So it was not known whether he was evaluated or treated.
The Baker Act allows for the involuntary confinement of a person for 72 hours. It is frequently invoked when law enforcement officers confront mentally ill people who refuse help. Some of those cases end in longer-term involuntary commitments to mental health facilities. But experts say Baker Act cases such as Dungy's are just as common and typically don't result in forced commitments.
"They have to think that you're a danger to yourself or others, and if they do then they can take you involuntarily to a public receiving facility," said Deborah Spellman, regional administrator of the Florida Department of Children and Families' substance abuse and mental health office.
"A lot of people might go in and feel depressed, but those people can be hooked up with a psychiatrist or a counseling center so those people don't stay involuntarily," she said.
More than 15,000 people in Florida this year were brought to public facilities under the Baker Act. About 3,800 were in the Tampa Bay area, according to DCF.
Dungy, the second-oldest of Tony Dungy's five children, was known for a silly sense of humor. At 6-foot-7, he was the towering, lanky teen who told jokes and danced to entertain friends.
But in an interview in Indianapolis last week, Dungy expressed concern that James had decided to live on his own in Tampa, where he was attending Hillsborough Community College.
Other fathers and sons had the Dungys on their minds Friday -including a few who shopped for Christmas gifts at Bucs and Bulls Heaven in north Tampa.
"We thought it would give fans who were shopping a chance to do something for the Dungy family," said Gerry D'Angelo, the store's executive director.
In front of Gaither High School, where Dungy played football his junior year, a marquee message reads: "Jesus Christ -- Our own James Dungy together forever."
This is cache, read story here
