Virginia police announced Tuesday that a young Senate aide found dead in July committed suicide.

On July 29, Botetourt County officers found Frederick Wayne Hutchins Jr., 26, on the shoulder of U.S. 220 with a single gunshot wound to the head. They found a gun underneath his body, but declined to rule the death as a suicide at the time.

Hutchins was a staffer for Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), helping with his 2006 campaign and then running his Roanoke district office.

He began his political career as a campaign manager for state Del. Onzlee Ware (D) and was well-known in the district. A Roanoke Times article from 2007 described Hutchins as a “NASCAR-loving country boy from rural Botetourt.”