World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

In this image, a woman believed to be Lam enters an elevator in the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, Jan. 31, the last day she was seen alive. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Police Department)

More testing must be done to determine the cause of death of a 21-year-old Canadian tourist whose body was found wedged in a water tank atop a downtown Los Angeles hotel, authorities said Thursday.

An autopsy performed Thursday didn't provide definitive answers into whether Elisa Lam was killed or if she fell victim to a bizarre accident. Coroner's officials will await toxicology tests before making a final determination.

Lam's body was found Tuesday in a water cistern atop the downtown Cecil Hotel. Police have called her death suspicious.

Guest complaints about low water pressure prompted a maintenance worker to make the gruesome discovery.

Before she died, hotel surveillance footage showed her inside an elevator pushing buttons and sticking her head out the doors, looking in both directions.

Meanwhile, water tested from the hotel didn't contain any live bacteria that would cause illness.

Although county health officials issued a do-not drink order, the results that came back Thursday indicated the water was safe from a "microbiological standpoint," said Angelo Bellomo, the county's director of environmental health.

"We can't say what the quality of the water was prior to the samples," taken on Tuesday, Bellomo said. "We can only say that the water met the standard at the time it was sampled."

Chlorine in the water likely killed any bacteria in the tank where Lam's body was found, Bellomo said. Two standard water tests were performed and samples were taken from throughout the hotel.