DANBY — As authorities worked to identify a young man whose remains were found on Danby Mountain Road on Thursday, residents here were coming to grips with the possibility that their town had been the scene of a homicide.
That doesn’t sit well with residents who say violent crime doesn’t represent their town or their values.
Meanwhile, the biggest questions in the case — who was this man, where was he from and how did he die — remained unanswered.
“It’s not the way real Danby people behave,” said Bradley Bender, the chairman of the town Select Board.
“We’re a close-knit community, and we’re always here to help each other,” Bender said. “When there are funerals here, or a house burns down or a barn burns down, everyone pitches in to raise money. We’re a loving, caring community.”
“I will be genuinely saddened if it was drug-related,” Bender added. “This epidemic is affecting our younger people.”
The results of an autopsy by the Vermont Medical Examiner to determine the man’s identity, and the manner and cause of death, had yet to be made public late Friday afternoon.
Vermont State Police said the man, in his 20s, was found by a passer-by Thursday morning on an unpaved stretch of Danby Mountain Road not far from the Dorset town line. The man, who was wearing a black puffy jacket with red piping, sweatpants and slide-style sandals, was found in the snow about 10 feet from the road.
It was not immediately clear if he had been shot at the scene or elsewhere, or what weapon was used.
Susan Howard, who lives in Mount Tabor but has her business in Danby, said there were no similar incidents in town in her memory.
“I’m shocked and saddened that someone would treat a human being like that,” she said.
After the victim was found at about 8:45 a.m. Thursday, police descended on Danby to process the crime scene. A Bennington County Sheriff’s deputy was first to arrive, followed by state police troopers from the Rutland and Shaftsbury barracks, the state police major crime unit, and the state police crime scene team.
Police said they were confident that the incident was isolated, and that the public was not in danger.
Bender said he received several phone calls about the case.
“People are basically saying, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re generally shocked by this,” he said. “It brings back remembrances of the Sarah Hunter murder.”
Hunter, a 32-year-old golf pro at Manchester Country Club, disappeared in September 1986. Her remains were found Thanksgiving Day of that year off Route 133 in Pawlet. Her purse was found along the side of a road in Danby.
A man who worked at a Manchester gas station near where Hunter’s car was found, David Allan Morrison, was later charged in Hunter’s death, but the charges were dropped in 2015 when it was found evidence had been mishandled. Her death remains unsolved.
With autopsy, ID pending in apparent homicide, Danby finds itself in the headlines - Bennington Banner
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