Coroner: Here's How Maddy Middleton Died

The cause of death has been established: Maddy Middleton, the 8-year-old girl found dead in a trash bin inside an apartment building garage in Santa Cruz, Calif., died of positional asphyxiation and stab wounds to the neck, the San Jose Mercury News reports, via a coroner's report. A sheriff clarifies that doesn't mean Maddy was strangled. Instead, she died of asphyxiation because of the placement of her body in the bin. Her death certificate says she was "wedged inside a garbage can and stabbed in the neck by another person." AJ Gonzalez, 15, has been charged with her rape and murder. (More Maddy Middleton stories.)