Coroner gives no details on cause of Cal U basketball player's death

Officials are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine how a 21-year-old California University of Pennsylvania basketball player died early Sunday after she was found unresponsive in her apartment in California.

Borough police said medical personnel told police at the scene that Shanice Clark of Toronto, Canada, apparently aspirated chewing gum while sleeping. Aspiration refers to the inhalation of food, drink or stomach contents into the windpipe.

Borough police Chief Rick Encapera said Tuesday he had received no information from Washington County Coroner Tim Warco about the results of an autopsy performed Monday. Clark was pronounced dead at about 4 a.m. Sunday at Monongahela Valley Hospital in Carroll, about an hour after she was found in her Vulcan Village apartment.

Warco could not be reached for comment Tuesday. A secretary in his office said she wasn't certain when the autopsy results would be released.

Clark, a senior communications major, had transferred to Cal U from Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Fla.

Because of Clark's death, the men's and women's basketball games against Gannon University in Erie that were scheduled to be played on Wednesday were postponed until Thursday on the Erie campus.