SAN DIEGO -- A 911 call from the home of Junior Seau released Friday captures the voice of a woman who is horrified to find the former NFL linebacker in a spare bedroom with a gunshot wound to the chest.
"My God, my boyfriend shot himself! Oh my God!" the eight-minute call begins.
The woman, who identifies herself as Megan, said she was returning to the home Wednesday morning from a one-hour visit to the gym.
Oceanside police released the recording one day after the San Diego County medical examiner's office ruled the death a suicide. The family plans to donate Seau's brain for research into football-related injuries.
The caller is nearly hysterical and breathing heavily during much of the call as emergency workers guide her through life-saving measures that failed.
"Where is the gun?" the dispatcher asks.
"It's next to him in the bed," she answers.
"What is your boyfriend's name?"
"Junior Seau," she says.
The dispatcher asks where he was shot.
"I can't tell, ma'am. It looks like in the heart," she said.
She told the dispatcher that he did not have a pulse and that his chest was not moving.
"I just came home from the gym, and he's in our spare bedroom, and he shot himself, and it looks like he shot himself in the chest," she says after the dispatcher transferred the call to the fire department.
Nearly five minutes into the call, she goes to the door to allow rescue workers in. She explains again what happened and then begins to sob.
The woman's last name is unintelligible on the recording. Lt. Leonard Mata, a spokesman for Oceanside police, said police aren't releasing the woman's name.
San Diego Chargers chaplain Shawn Mitchell said Friday he didn't know where the brain will be sent.
"The Seau family really has, almost like Junior, a philanthropic approach, where they always desire to help others," Mitchell said in a phone interview. "The purpose is not initially to discover anything about their son and what led to these tragic circumstances, but rather the betterment of other people and athletes down the road through anything that can be learned through the study."
Officials at Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment Friday on whether researchers there had reached out to the Seau family. The Boston University center has analyzed the brains of dozens of former athletes, including that of former Chicago player Dave Duerson, who shot himself in the chest last year.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press