Investigators have been unsuccessful in identifying the body of a man found in the Chickamauga Creek this weekend. According to the investigators he was wearing blue jean shorts, no shirt, a camouflage ball cap with “Mocs” on it, and had a blue back pack.
Attached are photos that were taken at the Medical Examiner’s Office.HOW TO HELPAnyone with information on the items listed or knows about the situation is asked to contact the Chattanooga Police Department at 423-698-2525.
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South Chickamauga Creek
Trevis Swinney doesn’t know the name of the dead man he found bobbing 10 feet from the banks of the South Chickamauga Creek.
No one does yet — or at least no one has come forward to say they do.
Still, Swinney says he has forged an attachment with the man’s story, whether he wants it or not.
“You know, you just keep thinking — that could be somebody’s son, brother or dad,” Swinney said.
Investigators who pulled the body out Sunday night discovered weights had been strapped to the man’s body and placed in a backpack fitted to his shoulders. They are now ruling his death suspicious.
Swinney, 33, and a friend John Henegar III were paddling down the creek Sunday afternoon in a 14-foot canoe, casting lines for bream and other small fish, when Swinney’s eyes were caught by a flash of bright orange.
Up against one of the many logjams clogging the creek, a pair of bright-orange sneaker soles were poking out of the creek. He looked closer and realized they were attached to a body.
A hand was sticking out of the water and a bloated belly was visible on the creek’s surface, he said. Though the pair stayed about a dozen feet from the body, the stench was still overwhelming, recalled Swinney, who lives in Chattanooga.
“My first reaction was, ‘Don’t let it be what I think it looks like,'” Swinney said. “Second reaction was ‘What do we do now?'”
They paddled quickly to the nearest take-out point, then called police.
So far, investigators have struggled to identify the severely bloated and decomposed body.
The main clues right now are his clothes. According to the investigators, the man was wearing blue and orange Asics sneakers, blue-jean shorts, a camouflage ball cap with “Chattanooga” across the front and “Mocs” on the side. He was not wearing a shirt, and the backpack strapped to his back had clothes inside — along with the weights.
Chattanooga police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary said the process to identify an unknown body starts with trying to get fingerprints. Investigators then comb through missing persons’ reports, check homeless camps and put out descriptions in the media.
Swinney, who said he has fished on the creek for more than a decade, doesn’t know why anyone would choose the creek to dispose of a body.
“It really is strange. There’s spots in that creek that are only 12 inches deep,” he said. “Near the Brainerd Road bridge and along the levee, it can get about 12 feet deep, but it can get really shallow for long stretches.”
Swinney said he’s not surprised no one had happened upon the man before he and Henegar. That portion of the creek has been inaccessible due to construction on a nearby bridge for more than a year, he said.
But he doesn’t plan to be back on the creek for a long time.
“I won’t go back to that creek for a while, I can assure you that,” he said.