Discovery Of Human Remains Leads Tulsa Police To Underground Community

Wednesday, July 9th 2014, 11:40 pm

By: News On 6

Police officers searching a storm drain near 81st Street and Riverside Drive made an interesting find Wednesday, human remains. Now they are trying to figure out to whom the skull, leg, arm and hand bones belong.

They believe the unidentified man died of natural causes and was most likely homeless. While investigating, they stumbled across what seems to be a community, literally underground, that some of Tulsa’s homeless men and women call home.

7/9/2014 Related Story: Tulsa Police: Bones Found In Storm Drains Likely Homeless Man

Tulsa Police Sergeant Dave Walker said they found an area set up like a house underneath the busy Riverside Drive in a storm drain.

“He had a clothes pole with hangers on it,” Walker said. “He had Tupperware bins so stuff would stay dry. He had been there a while.”

Police believe the bones belong to an unidentified man who died of natural causes.

“Given the nature of the living existence, you could expect the life expectancy of someone living in a storm water management system is not gonna be 70 or 80," Walker said.

While there isn’t anything certain on the specifics of the man, what is for certain is that he called the underground community home.

“There is a little bench down there that could be used as a bed and some stuff on the walls to insulate it. If you want to guess I would say that’s where he slept,” Walker said.

He said he wasn’t the only person there.

“Early in the morning we had people coming out of that drainage ditch and asleep in the spillways,”

Police said there is nothing criminal, however, so they are letting them be; saying they don't really cause any issues.

“A problem may come is, if we have a big storm and need that area to push water through and we’ve got couches and things like that down there that’s gonna stop it,” Walker said.

He said a lot of what they found in the dwelling space was collected and being processed in hopes of finding out exactly who the man was.

The medical examiner thinks the body has been in the storm drain for about six months and that the rain in June might have washed the body downstream.