Autopsy to Be Conducted on Jonah Shacknai's Son

Coronado police are looking more closely at the July 11 fall that led to the death of Spreckels homeowner Jonah Shacknai's son, an official said Monday.

An autopsy will be conducted on the body of Max Shacknai, 6, whose family announced his death Sunday. The examination will be Monday or Tuesday, according to Lea Corbin, a police spokeswoman, and is standard procedure in such cases.

Corbin also offered more details of the 911 call that led authorities to the house at 10:10 a.m. July 11.

A 13-year-old girl called for help following the boy's fall. The teen, Rebecca Zahau and Max Shacknai were the only ones in the residence at the time. Corbin said the girl was Zahau's sister.

Police Chief Louis Scanlon said last week that the boy fell down a staircase in the mansion and was found without a pulse and not breathing. He was being treated at Rady Children's Hospital.

That was two days before his father's girlfriend, Zahau, 32, died at the mansion. She was found nude and bound, and according to Jonah Shacknai's brother, hanging from a second-floor balcony.

Investigators have yet to release a cause of death for Zahau and have left open the possibility that she could have killed herself.

Coronado police are handling the investigation into the boy's fall, while they called in a San Diego County Sheriff's Department homicide unit to examine Zahau's death.

Scanlon and sheriffs detectives have maintained Monday's and Wednesday's incidents are not connected.

Corbin said that the police continue to approach the boy's July 11 fall as an accident, but are taking another look because of Zahau's death.

“It's something that needs to be investigated a bit further,” she said.