Ew!! Right here in my home town!

How horrible! And how sad! I shop at Brooks all the time.

Missing man’s body found
by children chasing a ball
By Don Eriksson
Nashoba Publishing
Article Launched:03/30/2007 08:38:21 AM EDT

Staff Writer

PEPPERELL — An incomplete autopsy has provided police enough information to conclude there was no foul play in the death of a 66-year-old Tarbell Street man who had been missing for more than two weeks, police Chief Alan Davis said Wednesday.

The body of Roger Kendall of 4 Tarbell Street, who had been missing since the snowy night of March 5, was recovered Saturday, March 24. The body was found between piles of snow and a wooden fence beside Brooks Pharmacy, perhaps 30 or 40 feet in from Tarbell Street, by children chasing a ball, the chief said. One youngster reportedly tripped over the body.

Davis said blood work was still being performed in the autopsy but Kendall’s body showed no evidence of foul play or, as some have speculated, that he might have been struck by a snow plow. No contusions or other visible injury was found, the chief said, declining to release any other information about the autopsy.

Kendall’s body was located between the 6-foot-high stockade fence and a row of decorative shrubs along the Brooks Pharmacy property line between Tarbell and Groton Streets. Plowed snow had been piled up against the shrubs, leading police to conclude Kendall had been covered with snow for an extended period.

“There’s a bank of mailboxes in the area. It’s strange no one using them had seen the body,” Davis said. The chief speculated that hypothermia might have played a role in Kendall’s death.

Kendall had been reported missing late on the morning of March 6 by his landlord, who became curious after discovering the inner door to Kendall’s apartment open and the outer door closed. Kendall was last seen on the afternoon of March 5, working on his car. That day was extremely cold with “whiteout” snow conditions.

During the police search, Sgt. James Peters had said, “It is an unusual circumstance because it didn’t look to us as if he had planned to leave (his apartment). It was his habit to tell his landlord when he left.” But Kendall never said he was leaving, Peters said.

“We’ve done extensive searching on foot and by all-terrain vehicles by several officers,” he had said. “One of them is a hunter and good at tracking. He checked the riverbanks. There was no sign.”

What makes the discovery of Kendall’s body so ironic, lying so close to well-traveled, well-lit parking lots and streets, Chief Davis said, was that Tarbell Street residents used mailboxes located very close to where it was found.

It is believed Kendall may have slipped and fell.

source: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/pepperell/ci_5556265