An employee cutting grass near Aiken Senior High School's football field made a gruesome discovery Monday when he noticed a foot sticking out of a tool shed and found a woman's badly decomposed body.
Police were unable to tell the woman's race, age, cause of death or how long she had been there, Cincinnati police spokesman Lt. Roger Wolf said.
The Hamilton County Coroner's Office is conducting an autopsy and is working with police to identify her. Police said they were investigating it as a homicide.
The employee found the body about 1:20 p.m. in an isolated spot on the wooded, 60-acre College Hill campus in a dilapidated purple shed with a broken garage door. School officials said the shed, some distance from the school, was rarely used.
The employee notified a police officer assigned to the school. The body appeared to be an older black woman,said Don Boegeman, who runs the school district's response team, which responds to crisis situations.
By the time school dismissed an hour later, students walked out to hear sirens blaring and see a news helicopter hovering.
"We're used to seeing police cars at Aiken," said Christiana Davis, 16, a junior from College Hill. "I didn't think anything of it at first."
Her classmates said they thought the commotion might have been concerning the tragedy they heard over morning announcements: that a student committed suicide over the weekend.
Then, in the wake of school shootings across the nation, some students said their thoughts turned to fear.
"Man, that makes me feel so unsafe to come to school," said Daniel Hood, 16, a sophomore from Winton Hills. "If it could be that person, it could be anybody."
His friend, Keith Isaac, 18, a senior from College Hill, called it "crazy."
"It makes me have doubts about going to prom," coming up May 15, he said.
Jerome Mason, 16, a junior from Mount Airy, said he's sad and worried. "What if that person comes back and I have to walk home by myself?" he said.
The last time a body was found on Cincinnati Public School property was September 1996. A woman's body was found outside the Hoffman School in East Walnut Hills. She was identified as Delores Garner Lowe, 36, and her death remains unsolved.
Enquirer reporter John Hopkins contributed to this report.
