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Police recovered the nearly naked body of an unidentified, tattooed, 25-35-year-old white male less than 100 feet downstream from the north end of the Autzen Footbridge on Thursday afternoon. The cause of death has yet to be determined.
The body, which was found half submerged near the shore, had probably been in the water for approximately one week, Eugene Police Department spokesman Melinda Kletzok said.
It was only clothed in a pair of socks.
“That’s pretty common with the force of the river,” she said, explaining that the river’s current likely stripped the man’s clothing from his body.
A young woman on the rocks in the Willamette River reported the body via a 911 call at 3 p.m., and the police were first on the scene. Lane County Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue program also responded with a boat.
The body had short, almost crew-cut, brown hair and was of a thin build, Kletzok said.
Because of clear skies and temperatures in the 70s in Eugene, there were numerous community members enjoying the riverside park who quickly spread word of the discovery.
University journalism student Stephen Person was just upstream of the bridge with friends when he received a phone call from a friend at around 3:30 p.m.
Student Jason Thayer told him that emergency responders were fishing someone, or something, out of the river. Person went for a closer look.
“Kind of a ‘Stand By Me’ curiosity, ya’ know, but without the leeches” he said, referring to the 1986 film in which four friends trek to see a body. “(That’s) not something you see everyday.”
Thayer said he saw helicopters in the area, but Kletzok said she was unable to confirm if aerial searches had been used.
“I’m so curious if it was a student or something like that,” Person said. “That would be terrible.”
Kletzok said the earliest identification of the body would probably be available this morning.
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