BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON - Investigators are looking for clues in a case involving a man whose body was discovered Friday by two men who found him but ran away without talking to police.
The body, found along Holds Branch Creek on Friday morning, had a wallet with identifying information. But the 48-year-old man's name was not released because his relatives had not been notified, said Lt. Danny Miles, Covington police spokesman.
As for the cause of death, investigators are proceeding as if it were a homicide, he said. The body was found lying face-up on leaves, against a small hillside that lines the rocky creek bed.
The body hadn't been there long, said Commonwealth's Attorney Don Buring. No car was found at the scene.
Police were called to the spot, just off Holds Branch Road in south Covington, by a woman who said a man flagged her down and told her he and a friend thought they'd found a body.
Lori Davis, who lives in the area, said the man, wearing camouflage, stopped her car about 10 a.m. While she waited, he ran down to the creek from the road, she said, and hollered back up: "Yeah, there's a man's dead body here. Call the police."
She drove to her house nearby and came back within five minutes, she said. But by then, the man she saw and another man with him were gone, and so was the small pickup that had been parked there. She assumed, because of his clothing, that he was a hunter.
Ms. Davis' brother, Bill Bundy, came quickly and walked to the creek bank. He just wanted to make sure the dead man wasn't somebody he knew. Almost everybody who lives along Holds Branch knows one another.
But he didn't recognize the man. Ms. Davis started down the path, but saw the legs and turned around.
"That was enough for me," she said.
