The Chesterton
Police Department is treating as a homicide the death of a woman whose body
was found in a vehicle this morning behind the offices of the Chesterton
Tribune, at 193 S. Calumet Road.
The victim--a white
female subject who has not yet been identifed but appears to have been in
her thirties--was found at approximately 9:10 a.m. by a Tribune
employee, slumped over in the front seat of a silver Ford SUV which had
either come to rest against or had rolled into an old sofa and a dumpster
located behind the Tribune building on Lois Lane. The SUV’s driver’s
side window was partially rolled down.
“It is being
treated as a homicide,” CPD Chief Dave Cincoski told the Tribune
shortly before deadline. “We are definitely looking at a weapon being
involved.”
Cincoski declined
to say what sort of weapon investigators believe may have been responsible.
Porter County Chuck
Harris told the Tribune that the “body did have injuries” but he was
unable at this early stage to say exactly what they were or how they were
sustained. A forensic autopsy has been scheduled for Thursday, he said.
At the moment
investigators believe that the woman’s body could have remained in the
vehicle undiscovered for as many as seven hours, as the SUV apparently
wasn’t there when the nearby Upper Deck tavern closed, sometime around 2
a.m.
“At this point
there’s been no identification of the woman,” Cincoski said. “We are
following leads to ID her.”
Cincoski emphasized
that he has no reason to believe the public is at risk. He did urge anyone
who may have seen or heard anything unusual late Tuesday or early
Wednesday--on Lois Lane, in Coffee Creek Park, or in any of the South
Calumet Road businesses which might have been open--to call the CPD at
926-1136.
Access to Lois
Lane--essentially the parking lot serving the South Calumet Road business
block as well as Coffee Creek Park--was still blocked by police tape late
this morning, Detectives, assisted by the Porter PD, were photographing the
scene and searching dumpsters.
Also on the scene:
the Chesterton Fire and Street departments.