Trucker discovers body at rest area|[6/4/06]
Published 12:00 am Monday, June 5, 2006
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and Warren County Sheriff’s Department are investigating the early-morning discovery of a body Saturday near a rest stop off Interstate 20, Sheriff Martin Pace said.
“All we know is that it’s a white male,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got right now. At this time, we have not identified the body.”
The body was sent to Mississippi Mortuary Services in Pearl for an autopsy, to be performed today. Pace would not say how authorities believe the man died.
At about 9:23 Saturday morning, a truck driver who had stopped at the rest area, just outside the Vicksburg city limits on the eastbound side of the interstate, saw the body and called 911, Pace said.
“He had parked his rig in the rest area to get some exercise, and he came upon the body of a white male lying just into the wooded area adjacent to the rest area,” Pace said.
Within minutes, sheriff’s deputies arrived to interview several witnesses. Once that process was completed and witnesses left the scene, a late-model Pontiac Grand Prix with no tag remained. A warrant to search the car was obtained late Saturday.
“We have one vehicle we can’t associate with anyone else,” Pace said. “We believe it is associated with the body.”
The sheriff’s department said a check of the vehicle’s identification number revealed the Pontiac had once been owned by a leasing agency and that it has been sold “at least once since then.”
“We are still working to identify the recent owner of that vehicle,” Pace said. “And we are very methodically going through the crime scene.”
The MBI has jurisdiction in the case because the rest area is a state right-of-way.