Mystery over death of Google engineer Chuchu Ma whose body was found floating in San Francisco Bay

A 23-year-old woman, who was found dead in the waters of the San Francisco Bay on Thursday (7 December), has been identified as Google employee Chuchu Ma.

The female Google engineer was identified by the Santa Clara County Coroner's Office, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety tweeted.

Officials from the county sheriff's office said that it not known if the woman's half-naked body was dumped into the bay or if it had floated there from another location, Fox 2 KTVU reported.

"The medical examiner and us and our detective units are actively working the investigation to see what there were. We don't know the circumstances of why the body was in the water," Shawn Ahearn, Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Officer said.

The body was initially found by a bicyclist on the Bay trail on the Sunnyvale-Moffett Field border, the television channel reported. He called 911 and reported a dead body floating face down in a drainage canal in Baylands waterway.

Ma had been reported missing the same day and an investigation into the death is ongoing. Detectives did not reveal whether Ma was the victim of a crime.

They have also said that the discovery did not pose a risk to the general public.

Ma worked at Google as a software engineer, NBC's KNTV reported. The company said: "Chu Chu was an excellent software engineer in our developer product team. We are devastated to learn of her passing and our deepest condolences are with her family and friends."

A LinkedIn profile with the same name, which likely belongs to Ma stated that she was a former intern at Yahoo and Telogis and an alumna of the University of Texas at Austin. International Business Times UK could not independently verify if the LinkedIn profile belonged to Ma.

According to Ma's co-worker, she constantly "glowed with cheer" and "always made others smile".

The Bay Trail is a part of a 500-mile loop around San Francisco Bay. The trail was a popular location with Sunnyvale residents, tourists and others who came to the area to appreciate the scenery, KTVU said.

Dan Coyle, a cyclist, said, "It's very sad. This is a beautiful trail. I take it five days a week. Lots of people take it every day. And some people take it to work. It's just very sad to learn that happened, whatever it is."

"I don't feel unsafe here, and I probably am not going to start feeling unsafe here," another cyclist, Joe Bond said.