In this April 30, 2013, file photo, Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam looks on as members of the state Senate Judiciary Committee vote unanimously to advance her nomination to fill a vacancy on the Court of Appeals at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y. (Photo: Mike Groll, AP) 
 
 NEW YORK — A prominent judge whose body was found in the Hudson River in April committed suicide, the city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced Wednesday. 
 
 The cause of death was drowning, the office said in relation to the death of Sheila Abdus-Salaam, who was the first black woman appointed to the New York State Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. 
 
 "It's an incredibly sad situation," Eric Phillips, spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, told USA TODAY via e-mail Wednesday. "The legal community and our entire city are very much reeling from the loss." 
 
 Rebecca Wilson, a spokeswoman for Abdus-Salaam's family, told USA TODAY Wednesday that the family had no comment at this time but if that changes, updates will be posted on the website created after the judge's death: https://judgeabdussalaam.org/. 
 
 The Court of Appeals did not have a comment, spokesman Gary Spencer said. 
 
 The fully-clothed body of Abdus-Salaam, 65, was found April 12 in the water off of West 132nd Street, in Harlem, one day after she was reported missing. There were no signs of trauma or criminality, officials said. Her husband, the Rev. Canon Gregory Jacobs of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J., identified the body. 
 
 At the time of Abdus-Salaam's death, the New York Daily News and other news organizations reported that law enforcement sources told them that officials were looking at suicide as a possible cause of death, but the medical examiner's office would not confirm that. 
 
 The tragedy drew an outpouring of grief from the highest levels of New York City and New York State government. 
 
 Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who'd appointed her to the Court of Appeals bench in 2013, called her a "trailblazing jurist and force for good." 
 
 Abdus-Salaam, a native of Washington, D.C., attended Barnard College on a scholarship before attending and graduating from Columbia University School of Law. She was first elected judge of the Civil Court of the City of New York in 1991. She was elected as a justice for New York State Supreme Court in 1993 and 2007. 
 
 The LGBT community hailed her as a hero after her 2016 Court of Appeals decision that expanded the legal definition of what it means to be a parent. The decision overturned a previous ruling that declared a non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship did not have visitation rights or authority to seek custody after a breakup. 
 
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 NEW YORK — The cause and manner of death of Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first African-American woman to serve on the New York Court of Appeals, was released Wednesday, months after her body washed up on the shore of the Hudson River. 
 
 The city’s medical examiner concluded that Abdus-Salaam died by drowning. The manner of death is suicide. 
 
 The late judge was found dead in April. The following month, the NYPD closed its investigation into her death. 
 
 Unable to locate any witnesses, police relied on security video to try to retrace the last hours of Abdus-Salaam’s life. She spent her workweeks in the city at an apartment on West 131st Street in Harlem. 
 
 After staying home from work on April 11, she was seen on video leaving the home at around 8:30 p.m. and walking several blocks north, then eventually west on West 145th Street to an elevated park on the Hudson River, where a final video shows her alone there at about 12:30 a.m. on April 12, according to two law enforcement officials. 
 
 Her body was found in the water about 13 hours later without obvious signs of trauma. She was in the same clothes — sweatshirt, sweatpants and white sneakers — as seen in the videos. 
 
 The 65-year-old Abdus-Salaam was raised with six siblings in a working-class family in Washington. She graduated from Barnard College before attending Columbia Law School, where she was on a committee organizing a 40th class reunion in June. 
 
 After she rose from a lawyer for low-income Brooklyn residents to state court justice, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed her to the state Court of Appeals in 2013. She once said that she wanted people to “consider me to be a judge who listens and gives them a fair shot.” 
 
 Her death brought an outpouring of accolades. Cuomo called her a “trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all.”
– The death of the first black woman to sit on New York state's highest court is sad but not suspicious, according to the New York City medical examiner's office. Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam was found dead in the Hudson River on April 12 in what the examiner's office ruled Wednesday was suicide by drowning, Pix 11 reports. Police trying to retrace the 65-year-old judge's final hours found security video of her walking alone in Riverbank State Park for hours before standing by the river's edge soon after midnight. Her body was found floating in the river around 13 hours later. Investigators found bruises on the neck of the judge's fully clothed body, and her husband, the Rev. Canon Gregory Jacobs, rejected early suggestions that she had killed herself. Investigators said it was possible that the bruises were caused when the body was retrieved from the water. An autopsy found water in the judge's lungs, indicating that she was alive when she went into the water, the New York Times reports. "It's an incredibly sad situation," Eric Phillips, spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, tells USA Today. "The legal community and our entire city are very much reeling from the loss."