Two young men found dead in Prescott Valley home Saturday identified
Both Yavapai College students who graduated from Bradshaw Mountain High School

The identities of two 19-year-old men found dead in a Prescott Valley home Saturday morning, Nov. 3, have been released by police.

Prescott Valley Police Department (PVPD) officers responded to a home in the 4300 block of Saratoga Drive around 11 a.m. and found the two unresponsive. They were eventually pronounced dead at the scene.

The two were identified as Gunner Bundrick and Jake Morales. Bundrick was a resident at the home. Both were students at Yavapai College who had graduated from Bradshaw Mountain High School in 2017.

“They were involved students,” said the high school’s principle Kort Miner. “They just didn’t make connections in their athletics. They made connections all over this campus, from special ed kids, to the kids they had in their classrooms, to the kids they competed with.”

Bundrick was a standout quarterback at the high school who went on to play football at Mesa Community College before transferring to Yavapai College, where he played baseball during the spring 2018 season.

Morales was a linebacker for the Bears and went on to play football for a school in Missouri before transferring to Yavapai College as well.

The cause of their deaths has not yet been released by authorities. Prescott Valley police, along with Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking (PANT), Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office, and the Yavapai County Attorney’s Office are continuing to investigate the incident.

“We are not giving out any more information because the investigation is continued,” said PVPD spokesperson James Risinger.

The Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office took a similar stance. While the county’s medical examiner has logged her initial findings and the two men’s bodies are ready to be released back to their families, tests are required before conclusions can be drawn about their deaths.

“Unfortunately, those reports can take four to six weeks,” said the examiner’s office Public Information Officer, David McAtee. “Nothing is made official or final until they get those ... reports back; because until then, it’s just assumptions, and we would never want to put out an assumption.”

Grief counseling began at Bradshaw Mountain High School on Monday and will continue throughout the week, Miner said.

“They have siblings that go here and our seniors were sophomores when they were here,” Miner said.

Similarly, Yavapai College had grief counselors come in on Monday to speak with the baseball team and any other students that wished to take advantage of the services, said the college’s Director of Marketing Tyler Rumsey.

For updates on this story as the Courier receives them, please visit dCourier.com.

Follow Max Efrein on Twitter @mefrein, email him at mefrein@prescottaz.com or call him at 928-445-3333 ext. 1105.


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