Country singer Tyler Rich’s New Year’s Eve run through the woods near his home in Massachusetts led to the discovery of a dead man, he said in a lengthy Instagram post on Friday.
“Not the way I planned to close 2020 … I think my last day of the year made sense. My heart breaks for this poor young man 😞 ”, he started. “This will be an image and a moment in my life, which I will never forget.”
Rich told the horrible details, saying he was on a six-kilometer run through Chicopee State Park when he saw what he thought was a young homeless man sleeping.
“He was face down and had a bag tied around his foot and he was face down,” he wrote. Although Rich continued his run, he later came back to see how he was doing, because he “looked like he was in a bad place”.
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“I realize that he is not breathing, and when I get in front of him, all I see is a lifeless face covered in blood. Everywhere. It looked like maybe a shot, or brute force, ”he continued. “Right now I freak out and run uphill to try to find someone with a phone to call the police (I only had my Apple Watch at the time).”
Rich said he found a couple with a phone, he made that call and soon afterwards gave statements to state police, FBI, local police and detectives for “a few hours”. While searching the body, the Chicopee police officers found a gun in the man’s hand, which was under his body. “Which means it could potentially have been a suicide … not that there is any kind of thing that could help me deal with finding it like that,” said Rich. “But, sure to know that he was not there discarded by someone else, and that he was where he wanted to be, at least it will make me a little more comfortable.”
An investigation is underway, but James Leydon of the Hampton District Attorney’s Office told Western Mass News that the incident “does not appear to be of a criminal nature”.
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“I’m doing what I can to process this, the image, the reality,” said Rich. “It was a difficult 24 hours. Something I will never fail to see. Or forget the two minutes when it was just him and me in the water while I figured out what the hell was going on and what I was going to do. Half silent and dead from a state park. Just running water, and he and I … he looked like a normal young kid. Someone with a family probably wondering where he was. “