It took more than 11 years, but police have finally identified a man who dropped dead in a Burger King on Laskin Road.
His name was Samuel Ray Barnard. He was 58, lived in the 600 block of Hunter Court, and died of natural causes on Oct. 16, 2001, the day he ran into the restaurant carrying no identification and fell on the floor, according to police.
It was a spot of paint that identified him in the end, said Officer Jimmy Barnes, a police spokesman. Detective Kevin Lokey, who works in the department's missing-persons unit, figured it out while going through old files, Barnes said.
Lokey noticed the death investigation report written at the time and a missing-person report filed a few months later by a Virginia Beach landlord both reported paint on the man's clothing.
Lokey discovered that the day Barnard died, he was working as a house painter at a nearby apartment complex. At the time, no one came forward to identify him, and the case remained unsolved.
"That was just good old detective work," Barnes said. "And starting from scratch, reading hundreds of missing-person reports."
Tuesday 5 February 2013
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/02/paint-helps-prove-identity-2001-death-burger-king
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