DRESDEN – The male who was pulled from the Muskingum River Tuesday morning will likely not be identified until Thursday at the earliest, Capt. Jeff LeCocq of the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
Because six people from Licking and Coshocton counties died in separate fires on Tuesday, the body had to be transported to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office – over two hours away in Dayton – for an autopsy. The sheriff’s office had originally planned on transporting the body to the Licking County Coroner’s Office, but the morgue was full after the string of other local tragedies that had occurred that day.
LeCocq said Wednesday afternoon that the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office had provided no updates on the body, which was pulled from the river at approximately 10 a.m. Tuesday.
“I do not expect to hear anything until tomorrow at the earliest on the autopsy,” LeCocq told Knox Pages.
The body was pulled from the Muskingum River after a woman spotted it floating in Dresden at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Zanesville Times Recorder reported. The woman was walking along Gene Cox Memorial Drive when she saw the body floating down the river. Rescue crews were able to locate and remove the body from the river shortly thereafter.
While there were no signs of obvious trauma on the victim’s body, LeCocq said the body was unidentifiable due to the wear it had received from the river. Officials were able to confirm it was a male, LeCocq said, but nothing more.
“I mean, this body appeared to have been in the water for a length of time,” said LeCocq, adding that most bodies pulled from rivers are initially unidentifiable. “That’s why you really have to wait and see what they find during the autopsy, when you have that exposure to the elements like that.”
Shortly after the body was recovered Tuesday, the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office contacted the Knox County Sheriff’s Office about a possible connection between the boy who had gone missing in the Kokosing River last week and the body recovered Tuesday.
Knox County Sheriff David Shaffer said in a press release that deputies were down in Columbus on Tuesday to meet with family members of 15-year-old Darnal Narayan, who disappeared while swimming in the Kokosing River on June 11. In an attempt to make an identification, photos that included clothing from the victim in Dresden were shown to family members of the missing boy.
Narayan was last seen wearing a blue swimsuit, according to 911 records. LeCocq was unable to comment on the nature of the recovered male’s clothing.
“Although it is possibly the same person, a positive identification has not yet been made,” Shaffer said in a press release.
Local and state rescue teams searched the Kokosing River near Honey Run Park for three days before calling off the investigation last Friday. Shaffer described the search as a “large-scale effort,” involving boats, divers, sonar systems and K9 units. He said the area had been difficult to search, given natural elements that can make work dangerous for divers.
The Kokosing River connects to the Muskingum River via the Walhonding River. According to Google Maps, if the body found Tuesday was indeed Narayan’s, it would have had to have traveled 48 miles downstream in less than a week to reach the point where it was located Tuesday.
The body might also be connected to a missing persons case in Coshocton County, LeCocq said. The Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office reached out to the Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office Tuesday as well regarding a 40-year-old male who went missing in March.
According to the Coshocton Tribune, Pat Westfall was last seen at his downtown Coshocton home, where he lived with his friend and his wife, on March 19. The Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office conducted an exhaustive investigation this spring to try to find Westfall, even dragging the Muskingum River, but to no avail.
The sheriff’s office is now seeking information from the public on Westfall’s whereabouts, the Tribune reported. Westfall is a white male, about 5-foot-7, weighing 115 pounds. He lived a short distance from the Muskingum River and is said to have suffered from epilepsy. He had never gone missing before.
LeCocq said the Knox County and Coshocton County sheriff’s offices are now assisting this week’s investigation. While it is possible the body could be associated with neither case, LeCocq said Muskingum County felt it important to seek their assistance just in case.
“I think you have to include all possibilities. And we had to bear in mind, we do have two people missing from our area that are both males,” LeCocq said. “Obviously we want to share information with them if, in fact, it is one of the missing people.”
