A former White House chef who was working for the Obama family was found dead Monday in a pond on the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard, after going missing.
According to a statement from the Massachusetts police, 45-year-old Tafari Campbell “was employed by former President Obama and was visiting Martha’s Vineyard at the time of his passing”.
The Massachusetts police in an earlier statement when Tafari Campbell went into the water and under, said that he “appeared to briefly struggle to stay on the surface, and then submerged and did not resurface”.
Campbell’s body was located and recovered shortly before 10 a.m. Monday from Edgartown Great Pond by the police using a side-scan sonar from a boat.
Divers from the police department retrieved his body about 100 feet from the shore and at a depth of about 8 feet.
Barack and Michelle Obama who were not in the residence at the time of the incident, in a joint statement sent to CNN, said they had first met Campbell when he worked as a sous chef at the White House and he continued to work for them after Obama’s tenure in office.
“Tafari was a beloved part of our family,” the Obamas said in their statement. “When we first met him, he was a talented sous chef at the White House – creative and passionate about food, and its ability to bring people together. In the years that followed, we got to know him as a warm, fun, extraordinarily kind person who made all of our lives a little brighter.”
“That’s why, when we were getting ready to leave the White House, we asked Tafari to stay with us, and he generously agreed. He’s been part of our lives ever since, and our hearts are broken that he’s gone,” the statement continued. “Today we join everyone who knew and loved Tafari – especially his wife Sherise and their twin boys, Xavier and Savin – in grieving the loss of a truly wonderful man.”
Though Tafari Campbell’s drowning is believed to be an accident, the police said that it is been investigated by the Detective Unit for the Cape and Islands District and Edgartown Police.
Tafari Campbell’s death, in connection with the death of Clinton’s former chef Walter Scheib, created an uproar on the internet. The 61-year-old was reported missing on June 16, 2015, after he was said to have gone off on a fishing trip three days earlier.
His body which was hidden from view by “dense vegetation and a steep, rocky decline”, was found “submerged in a mountain drainage flowing with surface runoff” about 25 yards from the Yerba Canyon trail.