Crime scene units of Panama City Beach Police taped off about an acre of woodlands just south of Panama City Beach Parkway, between Gardenia Drive and Fernwood Street, at about 1:30 p.m. A crew of workers clearing the vacant lot with a small, excavator bulldozer called police after coming across what they thought could be a human skeleton. As crime scene investigators and the medical examiner arrived on the scene, they determined the remains to be human in origin but could not make a positive identification of the person as of Tuesday.
Police discovered no evidence of foul play; but the climate, amount of undergrowth and decomposition made it difficult for officials to establish a cause of death, a timeline or even the gender of the person, according to Chief Drew Whitman.
“It’s definitely human remains,” Whitman said, noting a significant amount of debris had grown up through the bones. “They could’ve been there days, months, years — it’s hard to tell right now.”
Police were hacking away vines with machetes, removing branches with chainsaws and unearthing undergrowth with shovels to clear an area for crime scene investigators to search for evidence.
Whitman said they had yet to discover anything indicating the site would have been used as a camp. Residents along the adjacent neighborhood of
Clothes recovered from the scene also were too deteriorated to give significant clues as to gender or age range, Whitman said.
“For the most part, it is just skeletal remains,” he added.
Police cleared enough brush to move in large overhead lights to continue gathering clues for their investigation late into the night.
“Our crime scene will be out there all night long,” Whitman said. “It is a long, tedious process, but we want to make sure we do it right for this person’s family.”
An earlier version of this story appears below:
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Law enforcement is working a wooded area off Back Beach Road (U.S. 98) on Tuesday afternoon after crews discovered human remains, police said.
The remains were located between Gardenia and Fernwood streets. Police said it was unclear of the gender or how long the human remains had been there.
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