Country singer Tyler Rich’s New Year’s Day afternoon walk through the woods near his home in Massachusetts leads to the discovery of a dead man, he said in a lengthy Instagram post on Friday.
‘Not like I planned to end 2020 … I think my last day of the year made sense. My heart breaks for this poor young man 😞, ”he begins. “It will be an image and moment of my life, I will never forget.”
Rich recounts the gruesome details and says he was on a four-mile walk across Chicopee State Park when he saw what he thought was a young homeless man sleeping.
“He was on his stomach and tied a bag around his foot and was down,” he wrote. Although Rich continued his run-up, he later looked at him again because he ‘looked like he was in a bad place’.
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‘I realize he’s not breathing, and as I come out in front of him, only a lifeless face is full of blood. Everywhere. It looked as if it had been shot or blunted, “he continued. “Right now, I’m scared out and jumping up the hill to find someone with a phone to call the police (I only had my Apple Watch at the time).”
Rich said he found a couple with a phone, made the call and shortly afterwards gave statements to state troops, the FBI, local police and detectives for several hours. While the Chicopee officers searched the body, they found a gun in the man that was under his body. “Which means it could have been a suicide … not that there’s anything that can help me find him like that,” Rich said. “But, if I know he’s not being thrown away by someone else, and that he was where he wanted to be, it would at least reassure me a little more.”
An investigation is currently underway, but James Leydon of the Hampton District Attorney’s Office told Western Mass News the incident “does not appear to be criminal in nature.”
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“I do what I can to process it, the image, the reality,” Rich said. “It was about 24 hours. Something I will never see. Or forget the few minutes when it was just him and me at the water when I realized what the hell was going on and what I was going to do. Dead quiet middle of a state park. Just running water, and me and him … he looked like a young, normal kid. Someone with a family is probably wondering where he was. ‘