Three weeks before his disappearance, Tammaro had undergone liver surgery, and he later told family members he had not been feeling well.
Horse trainer John Tammaro's death was an accident, officials said Thursday. Tammaro had been missing since late February, and his body was found in his car at the bottom of a roadside canal drowned. Divers working for the South Florida Water Management District found Tammaro's 1987 Mercedes on Monday during a routine search of the canal for cars. "It was a drowning due to a motor vehicle accident," said Paul Randall, an investigator with the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, reading from the autopsy report, "and for injury description we had 'drove off roadway into canal."' Tammaro, 75, was last seen Feb. 25, when he drove his Mercedes out of the stables area at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, which is in Broward County about 10 miles north of Miami. Divers found Tammaro's car in a canal off Florida's Turnpike in Miramar. Miramar is between Gulfstream and the home where Tammaro was staying about 15 miles to the west in Pembroke Pines. Canals, rivers and other waterways crisscross South Florida, and accidents involving canals are not unusual, Randall noted. In Miramar, police investigators said they got no reports of witnesses seeing Tammaro's car go into the canal.
