The death of Zack Freeling in DC has now been classified as homicide

Three months later, Freeling was found dead in the foyer of his Quincy Place NE home. He had been shot once in the left shoulder and the bullet had traveled down through his heart, his family said.

When the DC medical examiner ruled the cause of death “undetermined,” police initially suspected suicide, which outraged family members and challenged that decision. The gun was found at the scene, which is not typical of a murder; but he was shot in the shoulder, which is not typical of a suicide. However, the DC crime lab was not accepting cases because it lost its accreditation in early 2021, so no tests were being done to detect things like gunpowder residue, investigators hired by the family said.

Nearly three years later, Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz reclassified the case: Freeling’s manner of death is now a homicide, Washington DC police announced last week – a move that opens the door for police to file charges.

“Just because there’s a suicide in the family doesn’t mean it was a suicide,” said his uncle Bruce Weiss, who has been calling the coroner’s office regularly since 2021 and found a receptive audience in Diaz.

“Dr. Diaz is a gem,” said Freeling’s aunt, Isa Freeling. “He was comforting, kind and conscientious, and even though it took three years, he did what he had to do.”

Diaz said in an interview that television shows and movies have created an unrealistic expectation of quick answers after a death. When he worked as a medical examiner’s assistant in Wayne County, Michigan, he once changed an “unexplained” death to “homicide” 30 years after the event.

“New information came to light,” Diaz said of the case. “These things happen. People expect instant results, like on TV.”

In the Freeling case, lab testing had to be outsourced to private labs because the DC crime lab had lost its accreditation and the FBI lab was overloaded, Diaz said. When the results came back this year, Diaz was able to safely classify the case as a homicide. He declined to specify the type of testing, citing the ongoing investigation. A finding of homicide simply means that a death was caused by another person, not that a murder was committed. Murder is a crime that must be charged and adjudicated by the courts.

Freeling grew up in Bethesda and attended Georgetown Day School, where he made friends easily and was on the wrestling team, his aunt said. Freeling’s father “always called him his ‘little lion,'” Isa Freeling said. “He would say, ‘Roar for me, Zack,’ and he would roar.”

She said Freeling “was an adventurer, he was full of life and he was compassionate. … He was just full of fun and love. He didn’t judge anyone.”

Freeling first came up with the idea for a kosher food truck while he was studying at Vanderbilt University and named it Aryeh’s Kitchen, Aryeh being the Hebrew word for lion. Built into an Airstream trailer, the truck was a success. But it was too heavy to handle a full course load, and Freeling eventually donated it to the Jewish community at Vanderbilt.

While Freeling was in college, his older brother Sam, who his family said struggled with mental health issues, took his own life in 2013. His father, Kenneth Freeling, was devastated, Isa Freeling said. Kenneth Freeling, a former partner at two major law firms and then an attorney at Covington & Burling, jumped to his death from his Park Avenue apartment in March 2017, shortly before Zack graduated from Vanderbilt.

Freeling’s parents had divorced, so Zack inherited much of his father’s fortune, which his aunt said was about $5 million. According to court records, his mother sued her son for the $5 million in 2018 for fraud. In 2019, his mother, Sue Cimbricz, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Zack helped care for her, his family said. A few days before her death, in January 2020, he posted a photo from her hospital bed: “Happy birthday, mom. I love you.”

“Zack was a very brave man,” said Isa Freeling, “after everything that happened to him, his mother suing him and him having to take care of her when she was dying. He persevered, he wanted to live, he wanted this food truck to work.”

Through this work, Zack Freeling met Corries Hardy, a food truck owner who cheered Freeling on and treated him like family, Isa Freeling recalls. Freeling’s The truck was again called Aryeh’s Kitchen and would serve “kosher Southern food” with “lots of steak, lots of meat,” his aunt said. He printed T-shirts with the truck’s logo, gradually mastered the DC Health Department certification process and hired a team of employees in advance of the truck’s launch.

But Freeling was “trusting,” his uncle said. “Maybe he wasn’t as smart as he could be. He had some money because his father had died, people knew that and took advantage of him.” His aunt and uncle said Freeling hired people to work on his truck without checking their pasts and his family was worried about him.

Freeling’s roommate was the one who called police on October 18, 2021, to report that he found Freeling unconscious on the first floor of the townhouse they rented together. according to a DC police report. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate him, but Freeling was pronounced dead at the scene; he suffered only a gunshot wound, the report said.

Freeling’s family was stunned when they learned that the cause of death was “undetermined.” They met with Washington police, who transferred the case from the suicide investigation unit to the homicide unit.

Isa Freeling and Weiss said investigators listened and seemed receptive, but nothing changed. They hired private investigators from a New York agency.

“We have analyzed the autopsy in detail,” said Michael Ruggiero, president of the law firm Beau Dietl & Associates. “Based on the trajectory of the bullet, we have determined that this is in no way a suicide. The gun would have had to be held at an angle that is physically impossible.”

The gun belonged to Freeling’s roommate, who told police Freeling must have found the gun when the roommate was out, Ruggiero said. The Washington Post was unable to locate the roommate.

Investigators also met with Diaz, who said all unsolved cases are discussed weekly by pathologists in the DC Medical Examiner’s Office.

“The initial consensus here,” Diaz said, “is that it could go either way. Is it possibly a homicide? Yes. Is it possibly not? Yes.”

Sometimes all the tests and analyses don’t provide an answer. “I’ve done 10,000 autopsies,” Diaz said. “There’s nothing more frustrating than not having an answer.” He said, “To the family’s credit, they kept asking.”

Diaz said the case needed to be tested at the lab, but the Washington crime lab had lost its accreditation in April 2021 after it made errors in testing ballistics in two homicide cases and then “misrepresented” those errors during the investigation. The district had used the FBI for some lab work, but there was a two-year backlog. Diaz eventually hired a private lab, which also experienced delays but finally produced results earlier this year. Diaz declined to discuss specifics of the evidence while the case is still under investigation.

Weiss said he persistently pressured Diaz. “He kept apologizing for taking so long,” Weiss said. “He stuck with us and said he would get to the bottom of it. We were lucky that we found a guy who listened to us, knew what he was doing and took the time to care.”

DC Police spokesman Tom Lynch said, “The investigation is ongoing and has uncovered a lot of evidence that without a medical examiner’s decision, no murder charge can be filed. Such a change in classification means that the investigation can continue with the goal of eventually filing murder charges against someone.”

Freeling’s aunt and uncle expressed their hope that Freeling’s killer will be charged and convicted.

“Zack wanted to live,” said Isa Freeling. “He was desperate to get married and start a new family. That future was taken from him and from us. He was the last living member of his family. We will never give up on getting justice for him.”