A woman’s body was found Wednesday in a ditch on the northbound side of I-85 in Hapeville, police said.
A maintenance worker, Matthew Harris, found the body near Willingham Bridge, while doing routine work in the morning.
Harris told Channel 2 Action News he saw something unusual while dumping a barrel of weeds. He found clothes on a fence and looked around more.
Harris told the television station he thought the woman’s body was a mannequin at first, but when he got closer, he knew she was dead.
“She was basically face down in a ditch and I could tell because there were already flies around her, she was deceased,” Harris told Channel 2. “I didn’t get any closer. I backed away, called the police.”
Hapeville homicide detective Stephen Cushing said the woman didn’t appear to have been hit by a car and he didn’t think her body had been on the side of the interstate for more than 48 hours.
The medical examiner’s office would conduct an autopsy as part of an ongoing investigation, Cushing said.
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