A Portage woman apparently shot herself fatally on Tuesday at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Beverly Shores.

The 42-year-old woman was found in a vehicle parked along an abandoned road off Beverly Drive east of Kemil Road, the National Park Service (NPS) said in a statement released today.

At around 10 a.m. a hiker walking along the abandoned road observed a parked pickup truck with its engine running, then saw its sole occupant, a woman with a gun in her hand, slumped over in the driver’s seat.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound, NPS said, and the Porter County Coroner’s Office “determined an autopsy would not be performed.”

Responding to the scene were NPS rangers, the Beverly Shores Police Department, the Porter County Sheriff’s Police, and the Porter Police Department.

Posted 1/9/2013