A 21-year-old man who had bicycled into Belle Terre Park the previous day was found dead Wednesday morning, of an apparent drug overdose. The park is adjacent to Wadsworth Elementary school, but school is not in session this week.
The man was sitting at a park bench, his face and hands on the table, looking like someone who was having a rest: that’s what a lawn maintenance crew thought the man was doing when the crew arrived at Wadsworth Elementary at 7 a.m., and got to work on the school’s grounds. It was only several hours later when a 56-year-old man at the park became concerned after noticing that the man’s chest was not moving. He reported the matter to authorities.
Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene, as did the Palm Coast Fire Department and Flagler County Fire Rescue. The Real Trime Crime Center determined, through footage from surveillance cameras in the park, that the man had cycled into the park at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
A sheriff’s deputy found the man with a backpack on the table next to him, a piece of tin foil under his face, a lighter and a bottle of Mountain Dew next to him. A phone was in his hand. He had some white pills in his backpack, kept in a small bottle with no label, and had kept his wallet there. The deputy found a receipt for what may have been the man’s last meal: at McDonald’s.
A Florida identification card enabled the deputy to identify the man, though the agency was withholding his identity pending next-of-kin notification.
A paramedic pronounced the man deceased at 10 a.m. The Medical Examiner removed the body and transported it to St. Augustine for an autopsy. The Sheriff’s Office “is waiting on toxicology results, but initial cause of death appears to be a drug overdose,” a sheriff’s spokesperson said in a brief statement on the ongoing investigation.
